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NTS  OF 


HISTORY 


VS. 


The  Whitman  Saved  Oregon 
Story 


Three  Essays  towards  a  true  history  of  the  Acquisition 
of  the  old  Oregon  Territory  (being  nearly  one-twelfth 
of  all  our  domain  on  this  continent ),  which  was  the 
longest,  the  most  remarkable  —  and  when  truthfully 
told — the  most  interesting  struggle  we  have  ever  made 
for  territory. 


WILLIAM  I.  MARSHALL 

Principal  of  the  Wm.  E.  Gladstone  School,  Chicago 
Member  American  Historical  Association 


Cloth  50  cts.,  Paper  25  cts. 


Press  of  the  Blakely  Printing  Co.,  Chicago 
1904 


F820 
M2.3 


Copyright,  1902,  1903,  1904 
By  WILLIAM   I.  MARSHALL 

All  Rights  Reserved 


HENRY  MORSE  STEfHEflBI 


tUL. 


INTRODUCTION. 


A    crrpaf-   amnnnt   r\i   iinpvnprtprl    wnrtr  ronnp^tprl    with    school 


CORRECTIONS 

Page  3.  I  find  that  a  newspaper  sketch  of  Mr.  Harvey  W. 
Scott  (on  which  I  depended)  was  incorrect  in  stating  that  he 
was  a  native  of  the  old  Oregon  Territory,  whereas  he  was  born 
in  Illinois,  in  1838,  and  with  his  parents  migrated  to  the  old 
Oregon  Territory  when  a  boy  of  14;  but  as  all  his  subsequent 
education  in  school  and  college  was  in  that  region  with  which 
his  life  has  now  been  closely  identified  for  more  than  half  a 
century,  he  is,  for  all  practical  purposes  as  much  of  an  "Ore- 
gonian,"  as  if  he  had  first  beheld  the  light  there. 

Page  17.  Fifteenth  line  from  the  bottom,  e  was  omitted 
after  W.     It  should  read,  "We  felt  that,"  etc. 

Page  66.     Third  line,  May  26  should  be  May  16. 

Page  83.  Since  publishing  this  book  I  have  learned  that  Dr. 
Silas  Reed  was  within  a  few  weeks  of  78  years  old  when  he 
wrote  this  letter  to  Prest.  L.  G.  Tyler. 

Page  91.  Twenty-fifth  line,  "was"  should  be  changed  to 
"way,"  so  that  it  will  read,  "and  in  every  way  as  worthless 
historically. ' ' 

It  will  be  noticed  that  not  one  of  these  trifling  "inac- 
curacies," (which  are  the  only  ones  yet  either  discovered  by  me, 
or  reported  to  me  by  the  few  hostile  critics  who  have  attacked 
the  book),  has  the  slightest  bearing  on  any  question  relating  to 
the  Whitman  Legend. 

If  any  one  discovers  any  inaccuracy— typographical  or  other- 
wise—in any  of  my  writings,  I  shall  be  greatly  obliged  if  notice 
of  the  same  is  promptly  mailed  to  me. 

WM.  I.  MARSHALL. 

August  21,  1905. 


without  solicitation  he  wrote  and  put  at  the  head  of  his  edi- 
torial page  his  opinion  of  it,  in  the  editorial  reprinted  on  page 
7  infra. 

Several  of  the  topics  in  the  " Strange  Treatment"  being  also 
treated  in  the  review  of  Rev.  M.  Eells'  "Reply,"  it  seemed 
best,  when  printing  these  two  essays  together,  to  somewhat 
amplify  those  topics  in  the  "Strange  Treatment"  as  it  was 


510068 


F820 

M£3 


dJL. 


INTRODUCTION. 


A  great  amount  of  unexpected  work  connected  with  school 
affairs  making  it  necessary  for  me  to  defer  the  publication  of 
my  "History  of  the  Acquisition  of  the  Old  Oregon  Territory 
and  the  Long-Suppressed  Evidence  About  Marcus  Whitman" 
(which  I  had  intended  to  publish  before  May  15,  1904)  till 
the  autumn  of  1904,  so  that  I  may  have  the  summer  vaca- 
tion to  carefully  re-examine  all  its  numerous  quotations  and 
compare  them  with  the  originals,  and  to  complete  a  very  full 
index  to  it,  I  have  decided  to  issue  a  limited  edition  of  these 
three  essays,  more  especially  for  the  information  of  some  writers 
whose  study  of  the  long  struggle  for  nearly  one-twelfth  of  all 
our  domain  on  this  continent  has  been  so  exceedingly  super- 
ficial, that  they  are  willing  to  accept  such  aggregations  of  blun- 
ders as  Dr.  Mowry's  "Marcus  Whitman,"  and  Rev.  Dr.  Eells' 
"Reply  to  Professor  Bourne,"  and  Barrows'  "Oregon,"  and 
Nixon's  "How  Marcus  Whitman  Saved  Oregon,"  and  Craig- 
head's "Story  of  Marcus  Whitman,"  as  trustworthy  historical 
authorities. 

The  "Strange  Treatment  of  Original  Sources"  was  published 
September  3,  1902,  in  the  Daily  Oregonian,  for  many  years 
the  leading  paper  of  Oregon,  its  publication  having  been  ar- 
ranged for,  not  by  me,  but  by  a  prominent  citizen  of  the  old 
Oregon  Territory,  who  desires  to  have  its  history  correctly 
written. 

Mr.  Harvey  W.  Scott  (editor-in-chief  of  the  Oregonian,  and 
first  president  of  the  Oregon  Historical  Society)  is  a  native  of 
the  old  Oregon  Territory,  and  not  only  ranks  as  one  of  the 
most  brilliant  and  successful  of  American  newspaper  editors, 
but  is  beyond  all  question  one  of  the  very  best,  and  probably 
the  best,  informed  man  now  living,  about  the  whole  history  of 
the  old  Oregon  Territory. 

On  reading  the  manuscript  of  the  "Strange  Treatment," 
without  solicitation  he  wrote  and  put  at  the  head  of  his  edi- 
torial page  his  opinion  of  it,  in  the  editorial  reprinted  on  page 
7  infra. 

Several  of  the  topics  in  the  "Strange  Treatment"  being  also 
treated  in  the  review  of  Rev.  M.  Eells'  "Reply,"  it  seemed 
best,  when  printing  these  two  essays  together,  to  somewhat 
amplify  those  topics   in  the  "Strange  Treatment"  as  it  was 


510068 


4  INTRODUCTION. 

published  in  the  Oregonian,  so  as  to  be  able  to  cut  out  a  good 
deal  of  the  matter  in  the  review  of  M.  Eells'  "Reply"  as  it 
was  originally  written,  and  still  have  it  complete  by  references 
to  the  appropriate  pages  in  the  "Strange  Treatment." 

The  discussion  of  Professor  Bourne's  paper  being  a  reprint 
from  the  electrotype  plates  of  the  Transactions  of  the  American 
Historical  Association  for  1900,  necessarily  retains  the  paging 
it  had  in  that  volume. 

My  forthcoming  book  will  for  the  first  time  give  the  public 
a  full  and  connected  history  of  the  whole  of  the  struggle  for  the 
acquisition  of  Oregon,  as  it  appears  from  a  very  careful'study 
of  the  original  sources,  and  will  have  full  chapters  on  the  fol- 
lowing (and  other)  topics: 

(a)  The  Governmental  Action  to  Secure  Oregon  from  1803 
to  1872,  Being  a  Full  Record  of  Diplomatic  Negotiations  with 
France,  Spain,  England  and  Russia ;  of  Congressional  Debates, 
of  Congressional  Committee  Reports  and  of  the  Explorations 
and  Reports  Thereon  of  United  States  Naval  and  Military 
Officers  and  Special  Agents. 

(b)  The  Truth  About  the  Discovery  of  Routes  Practicable 
for  and  the  Development  of  the  First  Transcontinental  Wagon 
Road,  1806  to  1846. 

(c)  The  Truth  About  the  Relation  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Company  to  the  American  Exploration,  Occupation  and  Settle- 
ment of  the  Oregon  Territory,  as  Stated  in  the  Contemporane- 
ous Letters,  and  Journals,  and  Reports  to  the  Government,  and 
Books,  and  Magazine 'Articles,  of  Every  American — fur  trader, 
scientist,  missionary,  private  explorer  or  government  officer  or 
leader  of  a  party  of  emigrants — who  left  any  such  contem- 
poraneous documents  (as  far  as  known)  down  to  the  Treaty  of 
1846.  Much  of  this  has  never  yet  been  published  and  much 
more  is  difficult  of  access. 

(d)  The  Long-Suppressed  Evidence  About  the  Origin  and 
Purpose  of  Whitman's  Ride. 

(e)  All  the  letters  Whitman  ever  wrote  making  claims  that 
the  establishment  of  his  mission  and  his  ride  had  been  of  benefit 
to  the  nation.    Most  of  this  has  been  heretofore  suppressed. 

(/)  The  Long-Suppressed  Evidence  as  to  the  Rapid  De- 
cadence of  the  Whitman-Spalding-Eells-Walker  Mission  after 
1839-40,  and  especially  after  1843. 

(g)  The  True  Causes  of  the  Whitman  Massacre,  with  the 
Conclusive  Proof — some  hitherto  suppressed  and  the  rest  diffi- 
cult of  access — of  the  total  falsity  of  the  accusation  that  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Company  and  the  Catholics  instigated  or  were 
in  any  way  responsible  for  that  perfectly  natural  outburst  of 
Indian  ferocity. 

These  chapters  will  contain  all  (and  much  more  than  all) 
the  evidence  which  submitted  by  me  in  manuscript,  as  stated 


INTRODUCTION.  5 

on  pages  48-51  infra.,  has  convinced  every  historian  who 
has  had  the  privilege  of  reading  it  that  the  whole  Whitman 
Saved  Oregon  Story  is  a  delusion,  and  the  additional  evi- 
dence in  these  chapters,  especially  that  which  has  been  hereto- 
fore suppressed,  will  prove  quite  as  surprising  as  to  the  little 
interest  in  the  question  of  a  wagon  road  to  Oregon  or  the  po- 
litical destiny  of  Oregon  displayed  by  Whitman  and  all  his 
associates  from  1836  to  1843,  and  as  to  the  true  relation  of  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Company  to  die  American  exploration,  occupa- 
tion and  settlement  of  Oregon,  and  as  to  the  decadence  of  the 
American  Board  Mission,  and  as  to  the  true  causes  of  the  Whit- 
man Massacre,  as  the  evidence  heretofore  submitted  proved  to 
be,  as  to  the  origin  and  purpose  of  Whitman's  ride. 

As  to  all  the  other  books,  and  magazine  and  newspaper 
articles  advocating  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story,  they, 
without  exception,  are  as  far  from  being  trustworthy  history 
as  are  Dr.  Mowry's  "Marcus  Whitman"  and  Rev.  Dr.  M.  Eells' 
"Reply,"  but  to  expose  all  their  suppressions,  and  false  assump- 
tions, and  misquotations,  and  misstatements  would  require  a 
thousand  pages. 

Barrows'  "Oregon"  and  Nixon's  "How  Marcus  Whitman 
Saved  Oregon"  have  had  the  widest  circulation  of  any  of 
them,  and  neither  book  even  alludes  to  the  existence  of  any  of 
the  correspondence  of  Whitman  and  his  associates  with  the 
American  Board  in  1840-41,  which  caused  the  Board  to  issue 
its  destructive  order  of  February,  1842  (which  neither  of  them 
either  quotes  or  alludes  to),  which  order  was  the  sole  cause  of 
Whitman's  ride. 

The  simplest  test  of  the  value  of  any  historical  writing  is 
to  examine  the  honesty  and  accuracy  of  its  quotations  and  its 
summaries  of  documents  too  long  to  quote,  and  any  writer  who 
does  not  quote  accurately  and  summarize  fairly  and  impartially 
is  wholly  unworthy  of  credence.  I  have  compared  every  quota- 
tion in  Barrows'  "Oregon,"  and  Nixon's  "How  Marcus  Whit- 
man Saved  Oregon,"  with  the  book,  government  document, 
magazine  or  newspaper  in  which  it  originally  appeared,  or  is 
alleged  to  have  appeared  (for  some  of  the  "quotations"  are 
pure  fabrications,  and  never  appeared  as  stated),  and  in  neither 
book  is  there  so  much  as  one  honest  quotation  on  any  important 
disputed  point. 

On  some  unimportant  disputed,  and  some  important  undis- 
puted points,  there  are  fair  quotations,  but  on  all  the  important 
disputed  points  the  quotations  range  in  unfairness  all  the  way 
from  that  device — as  disreputable  as  it  is  ancient — of  quoting 
accurately  up  to  a  certain  point,  and  stopping  when  the  very 
next  succeeding  paragraph  of  the  context  shows  that  the  im- 
pression sought  to  be  created  by  the  part  quoted  is  directly 
contrary  to  the  facts;  or  quoting  less  than  a  hundred  words 


6  INTRODUCTION. 

from  an  article  covering  nearly  8,000  words  in  an  English 
review,  and  stating  that  it  was  defamatory  of  Oregon  and 
printed  to  deceive  Americans  as  to  its  value  and  so  cause  them 
to  abandon  the  whole  of  it  to  England,  when  not  only  the  evi- 
dent, but  the  explicitly  avowed  purpose  of  the  writer  was  to 
persuade  England  that  it  ought  to  yield  to  the  American  claim 
as  far  North  as  49 °,  and  make  that  the  northern  boundary  of 
Oregon;  or  quoting  only  fourteen  words  from  a  long  article 
not  published  in  the  London  Examiner  till  July  24,  1847 — 
more  than  four  years  after  Whitman  started  back  to  Oregon — 
and  deliberately  antedating  it  to  1843,  and  so  making  it  appear 
to  have  been  published  prior  to  Whitman's  arrival  in  the  States, 
and  to  have  been  designed  to  deceive  us  as  to  the  value  of 
Oregon,  when,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  very  first  sentence  in  the 
article  (the  whole  of  which  is  easily  accessible,  being  quoted 
(but  without  its  date)  in  the  "Introduction  to  the  Works  of 
D.  Webster,"  page  CXLIX),  plainly  shows  that  it  was  written 
some  time  after  the  treaty  of  1846,  fixing  the  boundary  of 
Oregon  was  made,  and  that  its  purpose  was  to  congratulate  the 
English  Government  for  its  wisdom  in  yielding  to  the  American 
claim  and  fixing  the  boundary  at  49  °,  and  so  avoiding  the  ex- 
penditure of  life  and  treasure,  which  must  have  resulted  from 
going  to  war  over  a  region  whose  value  would  not  have  justi- 
fied such  expenditure;  or  prefacing  the  quotation  of  a  single 
sentence  from  a  long  lecture  by  Captain  William  Sturgis,  or  of 
two  brief  sentences  from  a  long  speech  by  Senator  Thomas  H. 
Benton,  by  statements  directly  contrary  to  the  sentiments  of  the 
whole  of  the  lecture  and  the  speech;  to  absolute  forgeries 
(some  of  them  attributed  to  Daniel  Webster),  so  clumsily  ex- 
ecuted that  their  very  language  shows  that  they  were  never 
uttered  by  Webster,  since,  whatever  were  his  failings,  he  al- 
ways discussed  great  public  questions  in  sensible  and  dignified 
English,  and  not  in  the  style  of  a  "sloppy"  and  sensational 
newpaper  writer. 

Presumably,  neither  Barrows  nor  Nixon  manufactured 
these  forgeries,  but  when  they  are  so  palpably  fabricated, 
surely  it  is  but  little  less  reprehensible  for  them  by  quoting 
them  to  have  endorsed  them  without  any  attempt  at  verifying 
them,  than  to  have  themselves  originated  them,  precisely  as 
there  is  little  moral  or  legal  distinction  in  the  offense  of  manu- 
facturing counterfeit  money  or  in  circulating  it,  when  a  mere 
glance  shows  to  any  fairly  intelligent  person  that  it  is  counter- 
feit, and  when  its  acceptance  by  the  unsuspecting  is  due  to 
their  faith  in  the  knowledge  and  integrity  of  the  circulator. 
Craighead's  "Story  of  Marcus  Whitman"  (published  by  the 
"Presbyterian  Board  of  Missions  and  Sunday  School  Work," 
and  so  put  largely  into  S.  S.  libraries),  is  not  only  as  worth- 
less historically  as  these  other  books,  but  is  even  more  ob- 


INTRODUCTION.  7 

jectionable,  as  its  main  purpose  is  to  revive  the  shameful 
slander  that  the  Catholics  and  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  instigated 
the  Whitman  Massacre. 


From  the  Daily  Oregonian  (of  Portland,  Oregon),  Septem- 
ber 3,  1902 : 

"a  scathing  review/' 

"It  is  well  to  call  attention  to  the  article  published  to-day  on 
The  Whitman  Myth,'  by  Principal  William  I.  Marshall  of 
Chicago.  This  article  is  a  dissection  of  the  pretensions  of 
Dr.  W.  A.  Mowry  as  an  historian,  as  exhibited  in  his  'Marcus 
Whitman  and  the  Early  Days  of  Oregon.'  It  explodes  com- 
pletely the  theory  on  which  the  Whitman  myth  is  built — the 
theory,  namely,  that  Oregon  was  about  to  be  surrendered  to 
Great  Britain ;  that  Whitman  undertook  his  winter  ride  to  pre- 
vent that  result;  that  his  ride  'saved  Oregon';  that  he  col- 
lected and  organized  the  migration  of  1843,  directed  its  march 
and  showed  it  a  wagon  route  over  the  plains  and  mountains. 
It  shows  how  Dr.  Mowry,  following  a  preconceived  idea  and 
purpose  of  hero-making,  has  colored  the  history  by  his  assump- 
tions and  misrepresented  it  by  his  suppressions.  In  this  article 
there  is  close  examination  of  the  original  sources  of  information 
for  ascertainment  of  the  origin  and  purpose  of  Whitman's  ride ; 
there  is  a  review  of  the  condition  of  the  Oregon  question  at 
Washington,  with  positive  proof  that  the  assumption  that  the 
Tyler  administration  was  indifferent  to  Oregon  was  unfounded, 
and  consequently  that  Whitman  could  have  exerted  no  influ- 
ence to  change  the  policy  of  the  National  Government  towards 
Oregon;  and,  finally,  there  is  demonstration  that  Whitman's 
relation  towards  the  great  migration  of  1843  was  slight  and 
practically  unimportant.  Great  service  is  done  to  the  truth 
of  history  by  this  review.  It  is  devotion  to  truth,  not  hostility 
to  the  memory  of  Whitman,  that  prompts  the  effort  to  clear 
this  subject  of  its  modern  accretions  of  myth  and  fable. 

"Whitman  was  but  one  of  our  pioneers.  He  was  energetic 
and  adventurous,  at  times  far  beyond  wisdom  or  prudence; 
and  to  his  blindness  to  real  danger,  which  a  wiser  man  would 
have  avoided,  the  destruction  of  himself  and  of  his  family  was 
due.  He  was  apotheosized  through  his  fate.  Hero  worship, 
stimulated  by  religious  or  by  ecclesiastical  devotion,  has  created 
his  legend  or  myth,  which  in  earlier  and  less  critical  times 
would  doubtless  have  passed  unchallenged.  But  in  our  age 
written  and  printed  records  are  preserved,  and  the  mythopeic 
faculty  of  the  human  mind  receives  checks  and  corrections  un- 
known in  the  composition  of  the  Homeric  poems  or  portions  of 
the  Biblical  narratives.    But  the  tendency  to  hero  worship  and 


8  INTRODUCTION. 

love  of  the  marvelous  will  never  be  wholly  eliminated  from  the 
mind  of  man.  Before  the  invention  of  writing  and  the  use  of 
printing  people  forgot  their  actual  history — so  uninteresting 
was  it — and  remembered  only  the  fables  they  had  built  upon  it. 
"It  is  not  the  purpose  of  the  Oregonian  to  repeat  the  state- 
ments presented  in  this  review,  but  only  to  refer  the  reader  to 
them  and  to  bespeak  for  them  careful  examination.  This  re- 
view by  no  means  exhausts  the  subject.  There  are  other 
proofs,  but  Mr.  Marshall,  in  this  article,  was  dealing  only  with 
the  methods  of  Dr.  Mowry,  which  he  has  subjected  to  a  search- 
ing and  very  complete  exposure.  Incidentally,  a  great  deal  of 
matter  has  been  presented  by  this  reviewer,  in  a  new  form." 


STRANGE  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES. 


A   Review   of   "Marcus    Whitman   and   the   Early   Days   of 
Oregon/'  by  Dr.  W.  A.  Mowry.      Silver,  Burdett  &  Co.,  1901. 


(Copyright,  1902,  by  Principal  William  I.  Marshall,  Chicago.) 


All  rights  reserved. 


It  was  owing  to  Dr.  Mowry's  strong  endorsement  of  the 
first  published  (or  Spalding-Gray)  version  of  the  Whitman 
Saved  Oregon  Story  to  me,  in  1877,  tnat  I  was  imposed  upon 
by  it  from  1877  to  1882,  and  I  have  corresponded  extensively 
with  him  upon  it,  especially  since  I  discovered,  and  (in  lectures 
in  the  great  Peabody  Institute  course  in  Baltimore  in  Novem- 
ber, 1884)  demonstrated  its  total  falsity;  and  he,  as  late  as 
December  9,  1898,  wrote  me  a  letter  imploring  me  not  to 
publish  the  really  vital  evidence  upon  it,  as  follows : 

"I  have  copied  hundreds  of  typewritten  pages  from  those 
letters"  (i.  e.,  of  Whitman  and  his  associates  to  the  American 
Board)  "during  the  last  thirteen  years. 

"One  thing,  however,  I  have  not  felt  at  liberty  to  copy,  and 
do  not  think  the  Board  should  ever  have  permitted  you  or  any 
one  else  to  copy. 

"I  refer  to  the  confidential  letters  written  by  the  missionaries 
to  the  Secretary  of  the  Board,  relating  to  their  private  and  per- 
sonal affairs,  and  particularly  complaints  one  of  another. 

"I  do  not  think  you  ought  to  publish  any  extracts  from  the 
letters  of  that  character." 

"  ....  In  my  own  case,  I  always  showed  to  the  Sec- 
retary the  matter  which  I  had  copied,  and  I  believe  that  this 
has  been  the  general  practice.  I  certainly  hope  you  will  not 
make  public  such  private  affairs,  even  though  the  courtesy  was 
extended  to  you  to  copy  private  letters." 

I  therefore  awaited  his  "Marcus  Whitman"  with  some  curi- 
osity to  see  whether  he  had  written  it  on  the  lines  of  sup- 


io       MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES. 

pression  and  evasion  and  special  pleading  indicated  by  his 
above  quoted  letter,  or  in  accord  with  the  universally  accepted 
canons  of  honest  historical  investigation  and  writing,  by  which 
all  real  historians  feel  bound  to  work. 

There  are  no  letters  in  the  correspondence  of  Whitman  and 
his  associates  with  the  American  Board,  which,  since  the  en- 
dorsement of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story,  by  the  Mis- 
sionary Herald,  the  official  organ  of  that  Board,  in  December, 
1866,  can  with  any  propriety  be  considered  as  private  or  con- 
fidential, the  public  having  an  undoubted  right  to  know  the  con- 
tents of  all  that  correspondence  in  order  that  it  may  correctly 
judge  of  the  validity  of  the  claims  made  about  Marcus  Whit- 
man, and  of  the  credence  it  should  give  to  the  "statements" 
of  Messrs.  Spalding,  Gray  and  C.  Eells  (from  twenty-three  to 
forty  years  after  the  event),  on  which  alone  the  Whitman 
Saved  Oregon  Story  rests. 

No  attempt  was  made  by  the  Secretary  of  the  American 
Board  to  limit  the  freedom  and  thoroughness  of  my  investi- 
gations. 

In  his  Preface,  after  informing  us  that  he  has  been  more 
than  twenty  years  investigating  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon 
subject,  and  that  he  has  read  "Everything  I  could  lay  my  hands 
upon,"  Dr.  Mowry  says :  "This  book  is  a  history.  It  is  not  an 
embellished  story  like  Irving's  Astoria  or  Parkman's  Oregon 
Trail.  It  was  written  with  the  single  purpose  of  stating  in  a 
clear  and  concise  manner  the  important  facts  with  which  it 
has  to  deal.    From  first  to  last  it  has  to  do  with  facts." 

On  page  1 14  he  says :  "It  should  be  the  aim  of  the  impartial 
historian  to  examine  all  sides  of  a  disputed  question,  to  sift  all 
statements,  to  examine  all  theories,  to  go,  as  far  as  possible,  to 
the  original  sources  for  his  facts,  and,  free  from  bias  or  preju- 
dice to  state  only  that  which  appears  to  be  thoroughly  cor- 
roborated as  truth." 

Let  us  compare  his  performance  with  this  correct  statement 
of  his  duty. 

He  says  (p.  1)  :  "At  one  time  our  government  ignored  the 
country"  (i.  e..  Oregon)  "as  worthless,  and  was  not  unwilling 
to  sell  it  for  a  mess  of  pottage."  (P.  2)  :  "Finally  the  savages 
were  permitted  to  butcher  in  cold  blood  the  man  who,  by 
bravery  and  patriotism  utterly  unprecedented,  wrested  that 
entire  country  from  the  grasp  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company, 
and  made  it  possible  for  the  United  States  to  hold  it."  (pp. 
170-71,  writing  of  the  spring  of  1843,  and  of  Webster's  and 
Tyler's  ideas  of  Oregon)  :  "It  was  plainly  apparent  that  Lord 
Ashburton,  Sir  George  Simpson  and  others,  with  British  pro- 
clivities, had  thoroughly  indoctrinated  our  statesmen  with  the 
idea  that  the  Rocky  Mountains  were  impassable  to  wagons, 
that  Oregon  could  not  be  peopled  from  the  States,  and  there- 


MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES.        n 

fore  its  value  to  this  country  was  small,"  and  that  "Webster 
thought  Oregon  was  useless  to  our  country  on  account  of  the 
impassable  character  of  the  mountains,"  and  that  "Tyler  en- 
tertained precisely  the  same  views"  (as  Webster)  "as  to  the 
uselessness  of  Oregon  to  the  United  States."  (pp.  191-2, 
speaking  of  those  desiring  to  migrate  to  Oregon  in  1843)  : 
"It  is  evident  from  a  variety  of  sources  of  information  that 
the  great  drawback  to  these  would-be  emigrants  was  that 
they  could  not  carry  their  wagons  and  families  through  the 
mountains.  The  great  Roc'<y  Mountain  range  and  the  Blue 
Mountains  were  supposed  to  be  impassable  for  wagons." 

ONLY    THREE    IMPORTANT    QUESTIONS    CONCERNING    WHITMAN. 

As  to  Dr.  Whitman  there  are  but  three  really  important 
questions,  to  wit: 

(A)  What  was  the  origin  and  the  purpose  of  Whitman's 
ride  from  Oregon  to  the  States,  begun  October  3,  1842? 

(B)  What  was  the  condition  of  the  Qpegep—cuiestion  at 
Washington  (i.  e.,  the  attitude  towards  i^  of  Tyer  ^  Adminis- 
tration), in  the  winter  of  1842-43  and  the^spring  of  1843,  and 
what  influence,  if  any,  did  Whitman  exert  to  change  the  policy 
of  the  National  Government  towards  Oregon. 

(C)  What  was  Whitman's  real  relation  to  the  great  over- 
land migration  01*1843? 

Let  us  examine  Dr.  Mowry's  treatment  of  the  original 
sources  concerning  each  of  these  three  points. 

ORIGINAL  SOURCES  AS  TO  " A." 

As  to  (A)  the  only  important  original  sources  and  the  only 
ones  that  it  is  certain  Dr.  Mo  wry  has  examined  are : 

First.  The  correspondence  of  the  Oregon  Mission  in  the 
archives  of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  in  Boston,  prior  to  Whitman's 
return  to  Oregon  in  September,  1843,  before  which  none  of 
his  associates  knew  that  anything  had  occurred  to  make  them 
wish  their  records  different  from  what  they  had  been  written. 

These  letters,  many  of  them  very  long  (one  covering  74  and 
another  52  pages  of  very  large  paper),  number  more  than  200 
and  must  aggregate  considerably  more  than  400,000  words, 
and  in  them  all  is  not  one  sentence  expressing  the  least  in- 
terest in  or  concern  about  the  political  destinies  of  any  part 
of  the  Oregon  Territory,  or  furnishing  the  least  support  in  any 
other  way  to  any  form  of  the  saving  Oregon  theory  of  Whit- 
man's ride,  and  the  same  is  true  of  all  the  correspondence  of 
all  these  missionaries  with  their  friends  (so  far  as  it  has  yet 
been  published),  during  the  whole  time  the  Oregon  question 
was  unsettled,  except  that  after  Whitman  had  visited  the 
States  and  found  the  whole  country  aflame  about  the  Oregon 


12        MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES. 

question  he  did,  in  some  of  his  letters  after  his  return,  express 
some  interest  in  the  subject,  and  made  some  very  extravagant 
and  unfounded  claims  of  having  been  largely  instrumental  in 
settling  the  question  by  having  led  out  the  1843  migration./- 

The  nearest  to  an  expression  of  any  interest  in  the  political 
destiny  of  Oregon  prior  to  Whitman's  Ride  is  the  following 
passage  in  an  undated  and  hitherto  unpublished  letter  of  W.  H. 
Gray  (No.  136,  Vol.  138,  American  Board  archives),  plainly 
written  after  October,  1839,  and  probably  in  November  or 
December,  1839 :  "Dr.  McLoughlin  said  to  me  that  it  was  his 
wish  that  our  people  should  occupy  that  place,  and  gave  as  a 
reason  that  then  our  people  would  be  all  together,  and  have 
nobody  to  meddle  with  us,  and  in  case  the  boundary  line  was 
to  be  the  Columbia  River  and  the  Fort"  (i.  e.,  Walla  Walla) 
"was  to  be  removed,  he  should  like  to  have  us  there,  both  on 
account  of  the  influence  we  might  exert  on  the  Indians  and 
the  men  of  the  Fort.  He  did  not  wish  to  answer  all  my  ques- 
tions about  the  country,  because  it  would  imply  a  claim  to 
the  country,  which  they  had  none,  except  what  their  forts  now 
occupied;  he  would  say  that  he  thought  we  had  just  as  good  a 
right  to  occupy  any  place  as  they  had." 

Any  proper  treatment  of  Whitman's  career  requires  an 
honest  summary  (to  the  extent  of  20  to  25  pages  like  this),  of 
some  75,000  to  90,000  words  of  this  correspondence,  and  in  ad- 
dition an  accurate  quotation  of  some  8,000  to  10,000  words 
more  of  it. 

Of  all  this  correspondence  Dr.  Mowry  quotes  only  510 
words,  and  they — even  as  he  quotes  them — furnish  no  support 
to  his  theories  about  the  political  purpose  of  Whitman's  ride. 

All  but  86  of  these  510  words  Professor  Bourne  had  prev- 
iously quoted  in  the  "Legend  of  Marcus  Whitman"  as  being  the 
strongest  possible  evidence  against  the  saving  Oregon  theory 
of  Whitman's  ride,  and  they  have  been  considered  as  being 
conclusive  against  the  theory  of  any  saving  Oregon  purpose 
of  that  ride  and  as  proving  it  to  have  been  undertaken  solely 
on  the  business  of  his  mission,  by  such  historians  as  Professor 
John  Fiske,  Dr.  Edward  Eggleston,  Professor  John  B.  Mc- 
Master,  Professor  Allen  C.  Thomas,  Professor  Harry  P.  Jud- 
son,  Professor  Edward  C.  McLaughlin,  Horace  E.  Scudder, 
Principal  Wilbur  F.  Gordy,  Professor  Edward  Channing,  Pro- 
fessor F.  Newton  Thorpe,  etc.,  etc.  (Cf.  Am.  Hist.  Review, 
January,  1901  (pp.  276-300)  and  Tr.  Am.  Hist.  Assn.;  1900, 
pp.  288-300). 

But,  whereas,  Professor  Bourne  quoted  accurately,  Dr. 
Mowry  quotes  far  otherwise. 

The  only  document  Whitman  took  with  him  to  the  American 
Board  from  the  three  men  who  remained  associated  with  him 
in  the  Mission  was  the  following: 


MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES.        13 

"Resolved,  That  if  arrangements  can  be  made  to  continue 
the  operations  of  this  station,  that  Dr.  Marcus  Whitman  be  at 
liberty  and  advised  to  visit  the  United  States  as  soon  as  prac- 
ticable, t6  confer  with  the  Committee  of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M. 
in  regard  to*  the  interests  of  this  Mission. 

(Signed)  "E.  Walker,  Moderator. 

"Cushing  Eells,  Scribe. 
"Wailatpu,  Sept.  28,  1842."        "H-  H-  Spalding," 

This  Dr.  Mowry  prints  (on  pp.  174-5),  but  omits  the  last 
eight  words,  "in  regard  to  the  interests  of  this  mission,"  being 
the  adverbial  phrase  which  distinctly  limited  to  the  business  of 
the^.  mission  the  purpose  for  which  all  of  his  associates  sanc- 
tioned his  journey. 

That  this  was  an  intentional  omission  is  evident  from  the 
fact  that  in  an  article  glorifying  Whitman,  in  the  Boston  Con- 
gregationalism November  18,  1897,  Dr.  Mowry  omitted  from 
his  quotation  of  this  document  all  after  the  word  "practicable," 
putting  a  period  there,  where  the  document  had  a  comma ;  and 
when  he  was  criticised  by  me  for  making  so  deceptive  a  quo- 
tation, he  defended  it  as  justifiable,  saying,  "One  sentence  was 
all  I  needed,  and  I  used  that  one,"  whereas  there  is  but  one 
complex  sentence  in  the  whole  document,  and  the  criticism 
was  because  he  had  not  "used  that  one,"  but  had  omitted  the 
two  adverbial  phrases  which  stated  precisely  why  Whitman 
was  authorized  to  make  his  ride. 

Further,  Dr.  Mowry  (p.  129)  prefaces  the  420  words  he 
has  quoted  from  Rev.  E.  Walker's  letter  of  October  3,  1842, 
with  the  statement  that  "Father  Eells  .  .  .  wrote  a  let- 
ter from  which  the  following  is  quoted,"  and  prints  at  the 
end  of  the  extract, 

"(Signed)  'Cushing  Eells/  " 

Yet  Dr.  Mowry  well  knows  (having  mentioned  this  identi- 
cal letter  as  one  of  Walker's  in  1899,  m  a  letter  to  the  writer 
of  this  criticism),  that  this  letter,  which  he  thus  ascribes  to 
Cushing  Eells,  is  indexed  in  the  archives  of  the  American 
Board  as  a  letter  from  Rev.  Elkanah  Walker,  and  that  of  the 
16  pages  of  this  letter,  15,  including  every  one  of  the  420  words 
he  has  quoted  from  it,  are  in  the  handwriting  of  Elkanah 
Walker,  and  that  it  is  signed  Elkanah  Walker,  and  not  Cushing 
Eells,  and  that  every  word  in  it  which  is  in  C.  Eells'  hand- 
writing is  the  following  endorsement  of  its  correctness,  on  its 
fourteenth  page,  which,  by  mistake,  Walker  had  left  blank. 

"Through  mistake  this  page  was  omitted.  I  am  happy  to 
say  the  subjects  of  this  letter  have  been  frequently  discussed 
of  late  by  Mr.  Walker  and  myself.  I  do  not  now  recollect 
that  there  has  been  any  important  difference  in  the  conclusions 


14        MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  Of  ORIGINAL  SOURCES. 

arrived  at,  and  I  do  most  cheerfully  add  that  considering  the 
short  time  allowed  for  writing-  the  letter  I  think  it  well  done 
and  consider  the  statements  very  just. 

"The  general  plan  of  the  letter  was  mutually  agreed  upon, 
and  after  hearing  the  whole  of  it  read  once  and  parts  of  it  more 
than  once,  I  have  observed  nothing  of  importance  to  which  I 
cannot  give  a  full  assent." 

(Signed)  "Cushing   Eells." 

To  this  endorsement  by  C.  Eells,  Dr.  Mowry  never  alludes, 
though  knowing  all  about  it  as  his  correspondence  with  me 
shows. 

Rev.  E.  Walker's  diary  (in  MS.,  in  possession  of  the  Oregon 
Historical  Society)  reads  "Monday,  Oct.  3,  1842.  Commenced 
my  letter  to  Mr.  Greene.  Succeeded  better  than  I  expected. 
Tuesday,  4.  Continued  to  write  and  make  slow  progress. 
Wednesday,  5.  Busy  at  writing,  but  feel  as  though  I  could 
not  make  out  a  good  one  .  .  .  Thursday,  6.  Still  at  my 
letter  .  .  .  Saturday,  8.  Finished  copying  my  letter  to 
Mr.  Greene  and  read  it  to  Mr.  Eells,  who  approved  it." 

So  "the  short  time  allowed  for  writing  the  letter"  was  six 
days. 

Not  another  word  besides  these  510  is  there  in  Dr.  Mowry's 
book,  written  by  Rev.  C.  Eells,  Rev.  H.  H.  Spalding,  Rev.  E. 
Walker,  or  Mr.  W.  H.  Gray,  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Ameri- 
can Board  while  the  mission  continued,  nor  subsequently 
down  to  May  28,  1866  (when  Rev.  C.  Eells  first  endorsed 
the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story,  in  a  letter  which  the  Mis- 
sionary Herald  published  in  December,  1866),  except  that  in 
his  Appendix,  Dr.  Mowry  prints  two  letters  from  Rev.  C. 
Eells,  and  two  from  Rev.  H.  H.  Spalding,  written  in  Decem- 
ber, 1847,  and  January,  1848,  and  relating  to  nothing  but  the 
dreadful  massacre  of  November  29-December  8,  1847,  m  which 
Dr.  and  Mrs.  Whitman  and  twelve  others  perished,  and  which 
destroyed  the  mission,  and  to  the  rescue  of  the  survivors  by  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Company's  efforts;  and  this  though  there  are 
in  the  American  Board  archives  letters  written  by  them  to  the 
American  Board,  between  Whitman's  return  to  Oregon,  in 
September,  1843,  an^  May,  1866,  amounting  to  about  250,000 
words. 

Though  thus  chary  of  quoting  what  C.  Eells,  H.  H.  Spalding 
and  W.  H.  Gray  wrote  prior  to  the  publication  of  the  Whit- 
man Saved  Oregon  story,  in  1864-5-6,  Dr.  Mowry  quotes  from 
their  letters,  "statements"  and  other  publications  subsequent 
to  September,  1865,  to  the  following  amounts  : 

From  Rev.  H.  H.  Spalding 2,192  words 

From  Rev.  C.  Eells 1,453  words 

From  Mr.  W.  H.  Gray .3,440  words 

Total    7,085  words 


HOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES.        15 

But  neither  he  nor  any  other  advocate  of  the  Saving  Oregon 
theory  of  Whitman's  ride  has  ever  been  able  to  produce  one 
word  written  by  Rev.  E.  Walker  in  support  of  it,  though  he 
lived  in  Oregon  till  his  death  in  1877,  and  knew  exactly  as  much 
about  the  origin  and  purpose  of  that  ride  as  any  of  his  asso- 
ciates. 

Great  as  is  this  amount,  it  is  but  a  faint  index  of  the  extent 
to  which  Dr.  Mowry  uses  the  statements  of  Spalding,^Gray  and 
C.  Eells  made  subsequent  to  1864-5,  f°r  practically^all  of  his 
book  that  relates  to  Whitman  is  a  mere  condensation  of,  or  a 
paraphrase  of  those  statements,  or  of  the  statements  of  others 
whose  ideas  about  the  matter  are  plainly  derived  from  Spald- 
ing, Gray  and  C.  Eells. 

An  example  of  how  very  peculiar  are  Dr.  Mowry's  ideas 
as  to  the  proper  use  of  "original  sources,"  is  found  in  his 
Chapter  X,  "The  Missionaries  Discuss  the  Situation,"  of  which 
he  devotes  3  pages  to  C.  Eells'  "recollections"  (in  1866,  and 
subsequent  years  down  to  1882),  which  "recollections"  (from 
24  to  40  years  after  the  event)  Mr.  Eells  did  not  pretend  to' 
support  by  reference  to  any  contemporaneous  letters,  journals 
or  other  written  or  printed  documents,  as  to  the  patriotic 
origin  of  Whitman's  ride,  and  of  the  details  of  the  Special 
Meeting  of  the  Mission  held  at  Whitman's  Station,  Sept.  26-27, 
1842,  which  authorized  his  ride. 

But  neither  in  Chapter  X,  nor  elsewhere  in  the  book,  does 
he  even  allude  to  the  14-page  letter  (received  by  D.  Greene, 
Sec,  on  May  3,  1843),  dated  Oct.  3,  1842,  in  Gushing  Eells' 
handwriting  and  signed  by  him  (and  indexed  by  the  American 
Board  among  C.  Eells'  letters),  which  has  a  brief  note  of  en- 
dorsement of  its  correctness  in  E.  Walker's  handwriting,  and  ■ 
signed  by  him,  which  letter  contains  the  official  report  of  that  \ 
Special  Meeting  of  Sept.  26-27,  ^42,  signed  by  E.  Walker, 
Moderator,  and  Cushing  Eells,  Scribe,  which  record,  written 
but  six  days  after  the  close  of  the  meeting,  gives  only  the  busi- 
ness of  the  mission  as  engaging  its  attention,  without  the  least 
intimation  that  any  political  or  patriotic  ideas  were  even  men- 
tioned during  its  whole  session. 

Yet  knowing  well  that  this  record  still  exists  in  the  archives 
of  the  American  Board,  Dr.  Mowry  copies  without  comment 
(on  p.  129)  Rev.  C.  Eells'  statement  made  in  1882,  that  the 
record  of  that  Special  Meeting  was  destroyed  at  the  time  of 
the  Whitman  massacre ! 

DR.    MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF   MRS.    WHITMAN'S   LETTERS. 

The  second  such  "original  source"  as  to  "A"  is  the  cor- 
respondence of  Mrs.  Whitman  with  her  parents,  brothers  and 
sisters  after  March,  1840,  when  Gray  began  to  bring  the  quar- 


16        MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES. 

rels  of  the  various  members  of  the  mission,  (and  especially  of 
the  Whitmans  and  Spalding,  and  himself,)  to  the  attention 
of  the  American  Board,  and  prior  to  her  husband's  return  in 
September,  1843. 

Of  this  there  will  be  found  about  42,000  words  in  the  Trans. 
Ore.  Pioneer  Association,  1891  and  1893,  and  to  fairly  present 
the  relation  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  to  the  Spalding- 
Whitman  mission  at  least  20,000  more  words  of  earlier  and 
later  dates  should  be  carefully  studied  and  summarized  to  the 
extent  of  fully  1,000  words,  while  fully  1,000  words  more 
should  be  quoted  from  these  20,000.  Of  the  42,000  above  men- 
tioned fully  2,000  should  be  quoted. 

Of  these  42,000  words,  Dr.  Mowry  only  quotes  the  following 
42  words  (p.  122)  in  a  letter  to  her  husband,  dated  Oct.  22, 
1842:  "Indeed,  much  as  I  shall  and  do  want  to  see  you,  I 
prefer  that  you  stay  just  as  long  as  it  is  necessary  to  accomplish 
all  your  heart's  desire  respecting  the  interest  of  this  country, 
so  dear  to  us  both,  our  home." 

This  brief  extract  Dr.  Mowry  declares  "Showed  what  she 
understood  to  be  the  object  of  his  journey ," 

But  how  this  shows  "What  his  heart's  desire  was,"  he  fails 
to  explain.  He  nowhere  informs  his  readers  where  they  can 
find  this  letter  (which  is  in  Trans.  Ore.  Pioneer  Assn.,  1891, 
p.  167). 

Between  September  29,  1842,  and  May  18,  1843,  Mrs. 
Whitman  wrote  five  letters,  as  follows,  to  her  relatives  and 
her  husband,  in  the  first  two  of  which  she  explicitly  stated  that 
his  journey  was  on  missionary  business,  and  in  the  other  three 
stated  what  amounted  to  the  same  thing. 

Sept.  29,  1842  (the  next  day  after  her  husband  first  pro- 
posed the  journey),  she  wrote  as  follows  to  her  brother,  at 
Quincy,  111. : 

"My  beloved  husband  has  about  concluded  to  start  next 
Monday  to  go  to  the  United  States.  ...  If  you  are  still 
in  Quincy  you  may  not  see  him  until  his  return,  as  his  busi- 
ness requires  great  haste.  He  wishes  to  reach  Boston  as  early 
as  possible  so  as  to  make  arrangements  to  return  next  summer 
if  prospered.  The  interests  of  the  missionary  cause  in  this 
country  calls  him  home."  Sept.  30,  1842,  she  wrote  to  "My 
Beloved  Parents,  Brothers  and  Sisters:  You  will  be  surprised 
if  this  letter  reaches  you  to  learn  that  the  bearer  is  my  dear 
husband,  and  that  you  will  after  a  few  days  have  the  pleasure 
of  seeing  him.  May  you  have  a  joyful  meeting.  He  goes 
upon  important  business  as  connected  with  the  missionary 
cause,  the  cause  of  Christ  in  this  land,  which  I  will  leave  for 
him  to  explain  when  you  see  him,  because  I  have  not  time 
to  enlarge.  He  has  but  yesterday  fully  made  up  his  mind 
to  go,  and  he  wishes  to  start  Monday,  and  this  is  Friday. 


MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES.        17 

.  .  .  He  has  for  a  companion  Mr.  Love  joy,  a  respectable, 
intelligent  man  and  a  lawyer,  but  not  a  Christian,  who  ex- 
pects to  accompany  him  all  the  way  to  Boston,  as  his  friends 
are  in  that  region,  and  perhaps  to  Washington.  .  .  .  He 
goes  with  the  advice  and  entire  confidence  of  his  brethren  in 
the  mission,  and  who  value  him  not  only  as  an  associate,  but 
as  their  physician,  and  feel  as  much  as  I  do,  that  they  know 
not  how  to  spare  him ;  but  the  interest  of  the  cause  demands 
the  sacrifice  on  our  part;  and  could  you  know  all  the  circum- 
stances in  the  case  you  would  see  more  clearly  how  much  our 
hearts  are  identified  in  the  salvation  of  the  Indians  and  the 
interests  of  the  cause  generally  in  this  country."  (Trans.  Ore. 
Pioneer  Assn.,  1893,  p.  165-9.) 

March  11,  1843,  she  wrote  to  her  sister  Harriet,  and  descant- 
ing on  the  pain  of  being  "so  widely  and  for  so  long  a  time" 
separated  from  her  husband,  continued,  "For  what  would  you 
be  willing  to  make  such  a  sacrifice?  Is  there  anything  in  this 
lower  world  that  would  tempt  you  to  it?  I  presume  not;  at 
least  I  can  see  no  earthly  inducement  sufficiently  paramount 
to  cause  me  voluntarily  to  take  upon  myself  such  a  painful 
trial.  Painful,  I  say  ?  Yes,  painful  in  the  extreme  to  the  nat- 
ural heart.  But  there  is  one  object,  our  blessed  Saviour,  for 
whose  sake  I  trust  both  you  as  well  as  we  are  willing,  if  called 
to  it,  to  suffer  all  things.  It  was  for  Him,  for  the  advance- 
ment of  His  cause,  that  I  could  say  to  my  beloved  husband, 
'Go;  take  all  the  time  necessary  to  accomplish  His  work;  and 
the  Lord  go  with  and  bless  you.'"     (Idem.,  155.) 

April  14,  1843,  sne  wrote  to  her  brother  Jonas  as  follows: 
"Husband's  presence  is  needed  very  much  at  this  juncture. 
A  great  loss  is  sustained  by  his  going  to  the  States.  I 
mean  a  present  loss  to  the  station  and  Indians,  but  hope 
and  expect  a  greater  good  will  be  accomplished  by  it. 
There  was  no  other  way  for  us  to  do.  W  felt  that  we 
could  not  remain  as  we  was  without  more  help,  and 
we  are  so  far  off  that  to  send  by  letter  and  get  returns 
was  too  slow  a  way  for  the  present  emergency/'  (Idem, 
p.  161.)  May  18,  1843,  sne  wrote  to  her  husband  a  letter 
which  followed  him  to  Boston,  and  reaching  there  Sept.  6, 
1843,  when  he  was  six  days'  journey  west  of  Ft.  Hall  on  his 
return  trip,  this  letter  (which  was  directed  on  the  outside  to 
Dr.  Whitman  or  Rev.  David  Greene)  was  retained  there,  and 
is  No.  106,  of  Vol.  138  of  the  Correspondence  of  the  Amer- 
ican Board.  In  it  she  wrote  "wishing  you,  my  dear  husband, 
as  speedy  a  return  to  the  bosom  of  your  family  as  the  busi- 
ness of  the  Lord  upon  which  you  have  gone  will  admit  of." 
So  far  as  known  these  five  letters  are  the  only  ones  which  Mrs. 
Whitman  ever  wrote  which  stated  anything  about  the  origin 


18       MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES. 

and  purpose  of  his  ride  (and  I  have  quoted  all  they  contain 
on  those  points). 

Though  knowing  about  all  these  letters,  Dr.  Mowry  does  not 
even  allude  to  any  one  of  them. 

DR.   MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  THE  FIRST  TWO  ACCOUNTS  OF  THE 
ORIGIN  AND  PURPOSE  OF  WHITMAN^  RIDE  EVER  PRINTED. 

The  only  remaining  "original  sources"  or  contemporaneous 
accounts  of  the  origin  and  purpose  of  Whitman's  ride  are  the 
two  official  accounts  in  the  Missionary  Herald — the  monthly 
organ  of  the  American  Board — the  first  in  the  number  for 
September,  1843,  and  the  second  in  the  number  for  July,  1848. 
Neither  Dr.  Mowry  nor  any  other  advocate  of  the  Saving  Ore- 
gon theory  of  that  ride  has  ever  dared  to  quote  either  of  these 
accounts,  and  I  do  not  believe  any  advocate  of  that  theory  ever 
will  give  his  readers  a  chance  to  read  them.  No  advocate  of 
the  Saving  Oregon  story  ever  intimated  that  any  such  accounts 
had  ever  been  published  till  after  Mrs.  Victor  and  Elwood 
Evans  in  their  investigations  found  and  published  them,  and 
since  them  nearly  all  advocates  of  the  Saving  Oregon  story, 
like  Barrows,  Craighead,  Coffin,  Nixon,  Mowry,  Mrs.  Eva 
Emery  Dye,  Parker,  and  Penrose  have  avoided  even  alluding 
to  these  two  official  accounts  of  the  origin  and  purpose  of  that 
ride.  If  based  only  on  the  correspondence  of  the  mission  with 
the  American  Board,  these  (which  are  not  only  the  first  two, 
but  also  the  only  articles  ever  printed  that  gave  any  account 
of  the  origin  and  purpose  of  that  ride  till  the  Saving  Oregon 
theory  was  published  in  1864-5-6)  could  not  be  considered 
as  "original  sources,"  since  that  correspondence  is  still  in  ex- 
istence (though  all  its  vital  parts  have  always  been  carefully 
suppressed  by  all  the  advocates  of  the  Saving  Oregon  story), 
but  as  these  two  accounts  might  have  been  based  to  some  ex- 
tent on  what  Whitman  himself  said,  when  in  Boston,  March 
30- April  8,  1843,  tney  are  fairly  entitled  to  rank  as  "original 
sources." 

The  first  account  is  as  follows:  "It  was  stated  in  the  last 
Annual  Report  that  the  Southern  Branch  of  this  Mission, 
embracing  the  stations  at  Wailatpu,  near  Walla  Walla,  and 
Clear  Water  and  Kamiah,  higher  up  on  the  waters  of 
Snake  River,  had  been  discontinued,  but  at  a  special  meeting 
of  the  mission,  held  last  October,  to  consider  this  decision,  it 
was  thought  advisable  that  Dr.  Whitman  should  personally 
communicate  the  condition  and  prospects  of  these  stations  to 
the  Prudential  Committee.  After  a  long  and  toilsome  journey 
he  reached  Boston,  early  in  the  spring;  and,  upon  hearing  the 
representations  which  he  made,  it  was  resolved  to  sustain  the 
operations  of  the  mission  without  any  material  change.     An- 


MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES.        19 

other  object  of  Dr.  Whitman  in  making  the  above  mentioned 
journey  was  to  procure  additional  laborers.  He  desired  also 
to  induce  Christian  families  to  emigrate  and  settle  in  the  vicin- 
ity of  the  different  stations,  that  they  might  relieve  the  mis- 
sionary of  his  secular  responsibilities,  and  also  contribute 
directly  in  various  ways  to  the  social  and  moral  improvement 
of  the  Indians.  How  far  his  wishes  in  those  particulars  will 
be  responded  to  is  uncertain/'  (Miss.  Herald,  September, 
1843,  P-  35^- )  This  did  not  appear  till  after  the  receipt  by  D. 
Greene,  Secretary,  of  Rev.  C.  Eells'  letter  of  Oct.  3,  1842, 
endorsed  by  Rev.  E.  Walker,  which  contained  the  official  re- 
port of  that  Special  Meeting,  and  of  Walker's  letter  of  Oct. 
3,  1842,  endorsed  by  C.  Eells  as  correct,  and  also  of  Walker's 
letter  of  Feb.  28,  1843,  complaining  that  Whitman  started 
to  the  States  without  waiting  for  their  letters,  as  he  had  agreed 
to  do,  and  also  H.  H.  Spalding's  long  letter  of  defense  and 
justification  of  Oct.  15,  1842,  as  the  endorsement  of  D.  Greene, 
secretary,  on  these  several  letters  shows.  This  first  published 
account  of  the  origin  and  purpose  of  the  ride  agrees  exactly 
with  the  account  given  in  the  letters  for  which  Whitman  did 
not  wait,  and  is  absolutely  irreconcilable  with  the  account  Rev. 
C.  Eells  gave  in  his  various  "statements"  in  1866,  1878  and 
1883.  Turning  to  p.  193  of  the  Annual  Report  of  the  American 
Board  for  1842  we  find  that  not  only  were  these  three  out  of 
the  four  stations  discontinued,  but  that  both  Rev.  H.  H.  Spald- 
ing and  Mr.  W.  H.  Gray  were  recalled  to  the  States  by  the 
order  of  February,  1842.  Yet  Gray,  in  1885,  wrote  that  he 
had  no  personal  knowledge  of  that  order,  or  of  its  being  talked 
about  at  the  Special  Meeting  of  Sept.  26-27,  1842.  (Cf.  Gray's 
article  in  the  Oregonian  of  Feb.  1,  1885,  reprinted  in  "The 
Whitman  Controversy"  (pamphlet),  Portland,  Ore.,  1885). 

The  second  account  is  in  the  Missionary  Herald  for  July, 
1848,  in  the  brief  sketch  of  his  life  (containing  only  162 
words),  prefacing  the  account  of  the  massacre,  and  merely 
says,  "He  made  a  visit  to  the  Atlantic  States  in  the  Spring  of 
1843,  being  called  hither  by  the  business  of  the  mission." 

Not  another  word  about  Whitman's  ride  was  printed  in  this 
official  organ  of  the  American  Board  till  in  December,  1866, 
18  years  and  five  months  later,  it  published  and  endorsed  Rev. 
C.  Eells'  version  of  its  origin  and  purpose. 

This  second  account  was  published  two  years  after  the  treaty 
of  1846  had  settled  the  boundary  of  Oregon  at  49  degrees, 
and  the  editors  of  the  Missionary  Herald  knew  that  in  chronicl- 
ing the  massacre  they  were  also  chronicling  the  final  destruction 
of  their  Oregon  Mission.  Who  can  doubt  that  with  the  mem- 
ory of  Whitman's  visit  only  five  years  before  fresh  in  their 
minds,  and  with  all  the  correspondence  of  the  mission  and  the 
records  of  the  action  of  the  Board  thereon  open  to  their  inspec- 


20        HOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES. 

tion,  they  knew,  and  in  this  short  sentence  stated  exactly  what 
caused  his  ride,  and  who  can  doubt  that  if  they  could  honestly 
have  claimed  that  that  ride  had  any  political  significance,  or 
had  saved  any,  even  the  smallest  part  of  Oregon  to  the  nation, 
they  would  then  have  stated  it,  when  the  whole  country  was 
stirred  with  sympathetic  sorrow  over  the  bloody  tragedy  which 
had  destroyed  their  Oregon  Mission?  This  second  account 
of  the  origin  and  purpose  of  Whitman's  ride,  containing  only 
22  words,  neither  Dr.  Mowry  nor  any  other  advocate  of  the 
Saving  Oregon  theory  of  that  ride  has  ever  quoted,  and  I 
think  no  one  of  them  has  ever  even  intimated  that  any  such 
account  was  ever  printed. 

DR.     MOWRY'S     TREATMENT     OF     WHITMAN^     CORRESPONDENCE 
AFTER   HIS  RETURN  TO  OREGON. 

Whitman's  letters  after  his  return  to  Oregon  cannot  be  con- 
sidered as  "original  sources"  as  to  the  origin  and  purpose 
of  that  ride,  since  his  frigid  reception  by  the  Secretary  of  the 
American  Board  (who  told  him  he  was  sorry  that  he  had 
come),  and  the  fact  that  the  next  month  after  he  started  on 
that  journey  the  Indians  burned  his  rude  grist  mill  and  a  large 
quantity  of  grain,  involving  him  in  so  much  expense  to  re- 
build, that,  with  the  expenses  of  his  journey,  he  was  troubled 
for  two  years  after  his  return  in  his  settlements  with  the 
American  Board,  as  he  states  in  his  letter  of  April  13,  1846, 
(which  Dr.  Mowry  refrains  from  even  alluding  to),  together 
with  the  fact  that  the  decadence  of  the  mission  which  had  be- 
gun as  early  as  1839,  continued  to  progress  towards  its  com- 
plete destruction  so  steadily  and  with  such  frightful  rapidity 
that  on  May  20,  1845,  less  tnan  2°  months  after  his  return, 
Whitman  himself,  having  been  directed  at  a  full  meeting  of  the 
Mission  (at  which  all  were  present  except  Mr.  Spalding),  held 
at  Whitman's  Station,  and  which  closed  May  14,  1845,  to  write 
to  D.  Greene,  Sec,  as  to  the  state  of  the  mission,  etc.,  was 
compelled  to  write :  "The  state  of  the  mission  is  such  as  to  give 
no  very  decided  promise  of  permanency  or  of  much  good."  All 
these  things  subjected  Whitman  to  very  strong  temptation  to 
exaggerate  the  importance  of  his  ride,  and  its  influence  on  the 
destiny  of  Oregon,  so  that  he  naturally  strove  to  convince  the 
Secretary  of  the  Board  that  though  the  mission  (whose  con- 
tinuance had  been  secured  only  by  that  ride),  seemed  destined 
soon  to  be  a  dismal  failure,  yet  his  expensive  disobedience  to 
the  positive  order  of  the  Board  in  making  that  ride  had,  some- 
how, resulted  in  such  benefit  to  Oregon  as  justified  the  expense 
of  the  ride  and  the  resulting  continuance  of  the  mission. 

An  indispensable  postulate  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon 
story  being  that  the  mission  was  of  immense  benefit  to  the 


MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES.        21 

natives,  and  continued  in  a  flourishing  condition  until  it  was 
destroyed  by  the  Whitman  massacre  of  November,  1847,  which 
massacre  all  the  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Legend  represent 
as  falling  on  a  flourishing  and  successful  mission,  while  Spald- 
ing and  Gray  (two  of  the  chief  witnesses  on  whom  Dr.  Mowry 
and  all  other  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story 
rely)  declared  that  it  was  instigated  by  the  Hudson  Bay  Com- 
pany, and  the  Catholics,  (which  charge  was  as  atrocious  and 
as  inexcusable  a  slander  as  ever  was  uttered,)  neither  Dr. 
Mowry  nor  any  other  advocate  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon 
story  has  ever  quoted  one  sentence  of  any  of  the  scores  of 
pages  of  the  contemporaneous  correspondence  and  diaries  of 
the  mission,  which  establish  beyond  dispute  that  it  was  in  a 
state  of  decadence  really  as  early  as  1839-40,  and  steadily  and 
rapidly  went  down  from  that  time  onward,  so  that  if  there 
had  been  no  Whitman  massacre  the  mission  in  all  probability 
would  soon  have  been  abandoned,  as  the  Methodist  Mission 
to  the  Oregon  Indians  had  already  been. 

Want  of  space  prevents  further  discussion  of  these  points 
here,  but  in  my  forthcoming  book  I  devote  a  chapter  to  "The 
Long  Suppressed  Evidence  on  the  Decadence  of  the  Whitman- 
Spalding-Eells-Walker  Mission,"  and  another  to  "The  Long 
Suppressed  Evidence  on  the  True  Causes  of  the  ^Whitman 
Massacre,"  and  the  readers  of  them  will  find  them  quite  as 
startling  as  the  chapter  on  "The  Long  Suppressed  Evidence  as 
to  the  Origin  and  Purpose  of  Whitman's  ride." 

Sixteen  of  Whitman's  letters  between  Nov.  1,  1843,  and 
Oct.  18,  1847,  ag-greg-ating-  about  26,000  to  28,000  words,  are 
in  the  archives  of  the  American  Board. 

Although  in  several  of  these  letters  Whitman  made  very 
extravagant  and  wholly  unwarranted  claims  of  great  services 
rendered  to  the  National  Government,  it  is  a  very  significant 
fact  that  in  none  of  them,  nor  in  any  of  his  letters  to  his  friends, 
nor  in  any  of  Mrs.  Whitman's  to  her  friends,  is  there  any 
claim  that  he  ever  had  had  any  interview  with  President  Tyler, 
or  Secretary  Webster,  or  that  he  had  ever  received  any  prom- 
ise of  any  assistance  from  them,  or  from  any  officer  of  the  Na- 
tional Government,  or  that  he  had  communicated  any  informa- 
tion of  any  importance  to  the  Government,  or  had  published  in 
newspapers  or  otherwise  any  such  information,  or  held  any 
meetings  to  promote  migration  to  Oregon,  or  that  he  had  had 
anything  to  do  with  originating  or  organizing  the  migration  of 
1843,  Dut  only>  at  first>  in  November,  1843,  tnat  n€  was  "instru- 
mental in  leading  the  1843  migration,"  and  later  that  he  "led" 
that  migration,  and  though  he  claims,  (what  is  manifestly  incor- 
rect,) that  the  migration  of  1843  was  a  decisive  factor  in 
bringing  about  the  treaty  of  1846,  he  nowhere,  save  in  his  letter 
of  April  t,  1847, — f°nr  and  one-half  years  after  he  started  on 


22        MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES. 

his  ride, — claims  that  his  ride  had  any  other  purpose  than 
missionary  business. 

Dr.  Mowry's  treatment  of  this  letter  illustrates  his  ideas  of 
going  to  "original  sources  wherever  practicable." 

On  pp.  198-9  he  says:  "In  another  letter"  (whose  date 
he  does  not  give),  "to  Mr.  Greene,  is  the  following:  'It  was 
to  open  a  practical  (practicable)  route  and  safe  passage,  and 
secure  a  favorable  report  of  the  journey  from  emigrants, 
which,  in.  connection  with  other  objects  caused  me  to  leave 
my  family  and  brave  the  toils  and  dangers  of  the  journey, 
notwithstanding  the  unusual  severity  of  the  winter,  and  the 
great  depth  of  snow.' 

"Then  he  mentions  the  'saving  the  mission  from  being  broken 
up,  as  'another'  object  of  his  journey." 

But  instead  of  going  to  the  "original  source"  for  this  in- 
accurate and  deceptive  quotation,  Dr.  Mowry  has  copied  it 
verbatim  (and  without  credit),  from  an  article  defending  the 
Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story  (by  Rev.  Dr.  Laurie,  the  official 
historian  of  the  American  Board),  in  the  Missionary  Herald, 
for  September,  1885,  p.  350. 

Going  to  the  "original  source,"  to  wit. :  Whitman's  own 
letter  (covering  7  pages  large  sized  letter  paper),  in  the 
archives  of  the  American  Board,  we  find  the  following,  viz. : 

"It  was  to  open  a  practical  route  and  safe  passage  and  to 
secure  a  favorable  report  of  the  journey  from  immigrants, 
which,  in  connection  with  other  objects,  caused  me  to  leave 
my  family  and  brave  the  toils  and  dangers  of  the  journey, 
which  carried  me  on,  notwithstanding  I  was  forced  out  of  my 
direct  track,  and  notwithstanding  the  unusual  severity  of  the 
winter  and  great  depth  of  snow. 

"In  connection  with  this  let  me  say,  the  other  great  object 
for  which  I  went  was  to  save  the  mission  from  being  broken 
up  just  then,  which  it  must  have  been,  as  you  will  see  by  a 
reference  to  the  doings  of  the  Committee"  (i.  e.,  the  Prudential 
Committee  of  the  American  Board),  "which  confirmed  the  re- 
call of  Mr.  Spalding  only  two  weeks  before  my  arrival  in 
Boston.  I  often  reflect  upon  the  fact  that  you  told  me  you 
were  sorry  I  came.  ...  It  may  not  be  inappropriate  to 
observe  that  at  that  moment  the  Methodist  Mission,  as  well 
as  our  own,  was  on  the  point  of  dissolution." 

Every  other  advocate  of  the  Whitman  Legend  who  has 
quoted  from  this  letter  has  refrained,  as  carefully  as  Dr.  Mowry 
has,  from  making  a  fair  quotation  from  it,  so  that  this  is  the 
first  chance  the  public  has  ever  had  to  read  exactly  what  Whit- 
man wrote  three  and  one-half  years  after  his  return  to  Oregon, 
and  all  that  has  been  found  that  he  ever  wrote,  making  any 
claim  that  anything  other  than  the  business  of  saving  the  mis- 
sion from  destruction  impelled  him  to  make  his  ride. 


MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES.        23 

If  the  reader  will  now  turn  to  Whitman's  letters  of  May 
12,  27,  28  and  30,  1843  (PP-  37-8  infra.),  he  will  discover  ex- 
actly how  much  (or  rather  how  very  little)  was  Whitman's 
interest  in  leading  a  migration  to  Oregon  at  the  very  time  when 
it  was  gathering  and  starting. 

Presumably  (though  he  has  not  accurately  quoted  this  let- 
ter) Dr.  Mowry  knows  its  contents,  and  presumably  also  he 
knows  perfectly  well  the  contents  of  Mrs.  Whitman's  letter 
of  April  14,  1843  (quoted  on  p.  17  ante,  but),  to  which  he  does 
not  allude.  Yet,  notwithstanding  Whitman  in  this  one  explicit- 
ly declares  that  the  mission  would  have  been  broken  up  "just 
then"  if  he  had  not  made  the  ride,  and  Mrs.  Whitman  wrote, 
"There  was  no  other  way  for  us  to  do,  we  felt  that  we  could 
not  remain,  as  we  was  without  more  help,  and  we  were  so  far 
off  that  to  send  by  letter  was  too  slow  a  way  for  the  present 
emergency."  Dr.  Mowry  (carefully  suppressing  this  strictly 
contemporaneous  evidence  of  the  two  people  who  knew  best 
about  the  urgency  of  the  mission  business  in  causing  Whitman 
to  make  his  winter's  ride)  says  (p.  131),  "But  if  this"  (i.  e., 
the  business  of  the  mission)  "was  the  only  motive  for  that 
hazardous  journey,  why  should  he  not  have  waited  until 
spring?  It  seems  quite  clear  that  a  summer  trip  across  the 
continent  would  have  accomplished  that  end  just  as  well,"  and 
(p.  188),  "Had  his  purpose  been  confined  solely  to  the  affairs 
of  the  mission  he  could  have  waited  until  spring,  and  made 
the  journey  during  the  summer  months/' 


Three  indispensable  postulates  of  Dr.  Mowry's  claim  that 
Whitman  "wrested  that  entire  country"  (i.  e.,  the  old  Oregon 
Territory)  "from  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company"  are: 

First.  That  as  late  as  March,  1843,  tnat  "entire  country" 
i.  e.,  the  present  states  of  Oregon,  Washington  and  Idaho,  to- 
gether with  about  28,000  square  miles  of  Northwestern  Mon- 
tana and  about  13,000  square  miles  of  Northwestern  Wyom- 
ing, in  all  about  292,000  square  miles,  or  nearly  one-twelfth 
of  all  our  territory  on  this  continent,  was  in  controversy  be- 
tween the  United  States  and  Great  Britain. 

Yet  knowing  perfectly  well  that  in  1824  and  again  in  1827 
England  offered  us  the  line  of  49  degrees  to  the  most  north- 
eastern branch  of  the  Columbia,  and  thence  the  river  to  the 
Pacific,  which  left  really  in  dispute  not  "that  entire  country," 
but  only  about  55,000  to  58,000  square  miles,  or  less  than 
one-fifth  of  "that  entire  country,"  being  only  that  part  of 
Washington  north  and  west  of  the  Columbia,  and  that  we 
both  times  immediately  refused  this  offer  and  insisted  on  49 
degrees  to  the  Coast,  Dr.  Mowry  deems  it  consistent  with  his 
duty  as  an  "impartial  historian"  to  suppress  all  mention  of 


24        MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES. 

these  offers  of  England,  and  of  the  fact  that  in  1825  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Company  "officially  notified"  Dr.  McLoughlin,  their 
superintendent  in  charge  of  the  Oregon  region  from  1824  to 
1845,  tnat  "in  no  event  could  the  British  claim  extend  south 
of  the  Columbia/'  and  also  to  suppress  all  mention  of  the  fact 
that  Lord  Ashburton  came  over  in  April,  1842,  "specifically 
authorized,"  as  we  shall  see  later,  to  renew  to  us  the  offer  made 
us  in  the  negotiations  of  1824  and  1827,  and  also  to  suppress 
all  mention  of  the  fact  that  in  1826,  when  not  only  all  the 
region  north  of  Missouri  and  west  of  the  Mississippi  River, 
but  also  everything  else  north  and  west  of  Illinois  and  Mich- 
igan was  not  even  organized  as  a  territory,  but  was  an  un- 
broken wilderness,  we  notified  England  that  "49  degrees  was 
our  ultimatum  for  the  northern  boundary  of  Oregon." 

Second.  That  England  could  by  making  settlements  and 
establishing  trading  posts  subsequent  to  Oct.  20,  1818  (the 
date  of  the  first  of  our  treaties  of  "joint  policy"  relating  to 
Oregon),  strengthen  her  claim  to  it  while  the  treaty  of  1818 
and  its  renewal  in  1827  remained  in  force. 

In  support  of  his  repeated  assertions  that  England  could 
do  this  and  that  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  were  actively 
engaged  in  doing  it,  Dr.  Mowry  quotes,  not  the  Presidents, 
Secretaries  of  State  and  Ministers  to  England  who  negotiated 
for  us  on  the  Oregon  boundary,  all  of  whom  held  that  Eng- 
land could  not  do  this,  but  his  favorite  "original  authorities" 
on  the  history  and  diplomacy  of  Oregon — Rev.  H.  H.  Spalding, 
Rev.  C.  Eells  and  Mr.  W.  H.  Gray. 

But  the  very  terms  of  those  treaties  made  such  strengthen- 
ing of  her  claims  impossible,  a  position  not  only  always  held 
by  every  one  of  our  diplomatists  and  Presidents  who  negotiated 
on  the  Oregon  question — James  Monroe,  John  Q.  Adams, 
Albert  Gallatin,  Andrew  Jackson,  Edward  Livingston,  Martin 
Van  Buren,  John  Tyler,  Edward  Everett,  Daniel  Webster, 
John  C.  Calhoun,  James  Buchanan,  James  K.  Polk  and  George 
Bancroft — and  also  by  many  others  of  our  most  eminent 
statesmen,  but  also  tacitly  admitted  by  all  the  British  diplo- 
matists who  negotiated  on  it,  no  one  of  whom  ever  ventured 
to  assert  that  such  settlements  and  trading  posts  had  made 
the  British  claim  one  whit  stronger  than  it  was  Oct.  20,  1818, 
and  also  explicitly  assented  to  by  Lord  Aberdeen  (head  of  the 
British  Foreign  Office  from  1841  to  1846),  in  two  interviews 
with  Edward  Everitt  in  November  and  December,  1843. 
(Cf.  on  this  the  authorities  cited  in  Trans.  Am.  Hist.  Assn.  for 
1900,  p.  223  infra,  and  Berlin  Arbitration,  p.  126.) 

Third.  That  as  late  as  March,  1843,  the  Government  and 
the  people  of  the  country  thought  Oregon  worthless  because 
the  Rocky  and  Blue  Mountains  were  supposed  to  be  impassa- 
ble for  wagons.    To  support  this  Dr.  Mowry  offers  not  a  sen- 


MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES.       25 

tcnce  from  any  Congressional  Debate  on  Oregon,  nor  from 
any  report  of  a  Congressional  Committee  on  Oregon,  nor  from 
any  report  of  any  Government  Explorer  of  Oregon,  nor  from 
any  book  of  travels  or  magazine  article  about  Oregon  printed 
prior  to  the  invention  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story,  in 
1864-5,  but  quotes  his  favorite  "original  sources"  for  Oregon 
history,  to  wit.:  Rev.  H.  H.  Spalding's,  Rev.  C.  Eells'  and 
W.  H.  Gray's  alleged  "recollections"  from  1864  to  1882,  and 
the  "recollections"  of  others  whose  ideas  are  plainly  mere 
echoes  of  Spalding,  C.  Eells  and  Gray. 

Prior  to  March,  1843,  tne  Oregon  Territory  had  been  far 
more  extensively  and  thoroughly  explored  and  reported  on 
(in  government  reports,  books  of  travel  and  magazine  articles) 
by  our  citizens,  both  government  expeditions  and  private  cit- 
izens; more  often  and  more  thoroughly  debated  in  Congress; 
the  subject  of  more  numerous  and  elaborate  reports  of  con- 
gressional committees;  the  object  of  more  and  more  important 
diplomatic  negotiations,  than  any  other  territorial  acquisition 
we  have  made  on  this  continent  had  been  up  to  the  date  of  its 
full  accomplishment;  and  to  the  Oregon  acquisition  there  was 
far  less  opposition — in  Congress  and  out  of  it — than  to  that 
of  any  other  of  these  acquisitions  except  Florida. 

Oregon  had  been  discussed  at  seventeen  sessions  of  Con- 
gress, between  1821  and  March  1,  1843.  In  these  debates  it 
was  repeatedly  declared,  beginning  as  early  as  1824,  that  Ore- 
gon was  easily  accessible  by  wagons  over  the  low  passes  of 
the  Rocky  Mountains,  even  without  any  expenditure  for  road 
making. 

The  official  record  of  these  debates  covers  300  columns,  or 
about  250,000  words  in  "Annals  of  Congress,"  "Debates  in 
Congress,"  and  "Congressional  Globe." 

Yet  Dr.  Mowry  deems  it  consistent  with  his  duty  as  an  "im- 
partial historian"  not  only  not  to  quote  one  word  of  all  these 
debates,  but  not  even  to  mention  the  above  official  reports 
(which  are  the  only  "original  sources"  for  these  debates). 

To  these  seventeen  sessions  there  were  made  eleven  reports 
of  committees  of  the  Senate  or  House  of  Representatives,  and 
besides  there  were  read  in  the  Senate  or  House  the  reports 
of  special  agents  J.  B.  Provost  (1822),  Lieut.  W.  A.  Slacum, 
of  the  navy  (sent  to  Oregon  by  the  state  department  by  order 
of  President  Jackson  in  1835,  with  special  instructions  to  ex- 
amine and  report  on  everything  important  for  our  government 
to  know  about  Oregon),  whose  report  was  read  in  the  Senate 
in  1837,  and  was  often  referred  to  and  quoted  in  later  congres- 
sional discussions  and  in  congressional  committee  reports,  and 
of  Secretary  of  War  Poinsett,  in  1840,  recommending  the  es- 
tablishment of  a  line  of  military  posts  from  the  Missouri  River 
to  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia. 


26        MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES. 

There  was  also  the  report  of  Captain  Bonneville  to  the  Sec- 
retary of  War,  in  1835,  reporting  his  success  in  driving  twenty 
loaded  wagons  through  the  South  Pass  over  the  Rockies  and 
into  the  Oregon  Territory  to  Green  River,  in  1832,  popularized 
by  Irving's  "Bonneville,"  published  in  New  York  and  also  in 
England,  in  1837,  and  very  widely  read  in  both  countries. 

All  these  committee  reports  were  unanimous,  all  enthusiastic 
as  to  the  great  value  of  Oregon  to  us,  and  the  validity  of  our 
title  at  least  as  far  north  as  49  degrees,  and  each  was  unani- 
mously adopted  by  the  body  to  which  it  was  made. 

As  early  as  1831  the  report  of  the  military  committee  of  the 
Senate  contained  the  letter  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  Fur  Com- 
pany to  the  Secretary  of  War,  dated  October  29,  1830,  stating 
that  in  the  preceding  five  years  with  from  eighty  to  one  hun- 
dred men,  divided  into  small  parties,  they  had  explored  the 
whole  region  beyond  the  Rockies  from  the  Gulf  of  California 
to  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia,  and  had  made  discoveries  and 
acquired  information  they  deemed  it  important  to  communicate 
to  the  government.  Then,  after  describing  their  driving  ten 
wagons  loaded  with  from  1,800  to  2,000  pounds  each  from  St. 
Louis  to  the  east  end  of  the  South  Pass  and  back  to  St.  Louis 
between  April  10  and  October  10,  1830,  they  continue: 
"This  is  the  first  time  wagons  ever  went  to  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains, and  the  ease  with  which  it  was  done  proves  the  facility  of 
communicating  overland  with  the  Pacific,  the  route  beyond  the 
mountains  to  the  Great  Falls  of  the  Columbia  being  easier  than 
on  this  side/' 

The  Great  Falls  of  the  Columbia  are  not  only  west  of  the 
Blue  Mountains,  but  more  than  one  hundred  miles  west  of 
where  Whitman  six  years  later  established  his  mission;  and 
this  letter  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  Fur  Company  was  often 
referred  to  and  quoted  in  later  congressional  committee  re- 
ports and  debates,  and  in  books,  newspapers  and  magazine  ar- 
ticles before  1843. 

These  fifteen  reports  covered  about  600  pages,  or  350,000  to 
375,000  words,  but  of  them  all  Doctor  Mowry,  as  an  "impar- 
tial historian,"  only  names  three,  and  only  quotes  from  one — 
Cushing's,  in  1839 — to  tne  extent  of  297  words,  and  that  only 
on  the  wholly  unimportant  point  of  whether  or  not  Oregon  was 
included  in  the  Louisiana  purchase,  while  he  omits  to  even 
allude  anywhere  in  his  book  to  Lieutenant  Slacum,  or  to  Poin- 
sett's report,  or  to  the  Rocky  Mountain  Fur  Company's  wa- 
gons in  1830,  and  their  extensive  explorations  in  Oregon  be- 
fore 1830,  or  to  Bonneville  proving  Oregon  easily  accessible 
by  wagons  in  1832,  or  to  the  fact  that  Whitman,  in  1835,  wrote 
(in  a  letter  heretofore  carefully  suppressed)  of  Bonneville's 
wagons,  and  that  the  route  presented  little  difficulty  for  wa- 
gons; and  though  quoting  freely  from  Gray's  and  Spalding's 


MO  WRY' S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES.        27 

declarations  in  1864-5  to  J882  that  the  route  to  Oregon  was 
deemed  impracticable  for  wagons  as  late  as  1843,  ne  omits  to 
quote  from  Spalding's  letter  of  September  20,  1836  (published 
in  the  Missionary  Herald,  October,  1837,  and  giving"  an  account 
of  the  overland  journey  of  the  Spalding- Whitman  party  in 
1836),  the  following:  "We  drove  a  wagon  to  Snake  Fort"  (i. 
e.,  Fort  Boise)  "and  could  have  driven  it  through  but  for  the 
fatigue  of  our  animals.  We  expect  to  get  it  at  some  future 
time." 

Before  March  1,  1843,  in  presidential  messages,  or  in  in- 
structions to  diplomats  negotiating  with  England  or  Russia 
about  Oregon,  or  in  other  executive  papers,  or  in  correspond- 
ence which  has  been  in  print  for  fifteen  to  fifty  years  past,  or 
in  reports  of  negotiations  on  Oregon,  or  in  debates  in  Congress, 
or  in  reports  of  congressional  committees,  the  following  states- 
men are  on  record  as  holding  that  Oregon  was  of  great  value 
to  the  United  States,  and  could  be  easily  occupied  by  us,  while 
it  was  practically  impossible  (as  the  world  then  was)  for  any 
European  power  to  people  it,  and  that  our  title  was  unques- 
tionable at  least  as  far  north  as  49  degrees,  and  that  we  should 
insist  on  not  accepting  any  line  south  of  49  degrees  as  the 
north  boundary  of  Oregon,  viz. : 

Ten  men  who  have  been  presidents,  Jefferson,  Madison, 
Monroe,  J.  Q.  Adams,  Jackson,  Van  Buren,  Tyler,  Polk, 
Pierce  and  Buchanan ;  also  Calhoun  and  King,  vice-presidents 
(as  had  been  also  Jefferson  and  Van  Buren)  ;  also  Webster, 
Clay,  Everett,  Forsyth,  secretaries  of  state  (as  had  been  also 
Jefferson,  Madison,  Monroe,  J.  Q.  Adams,  Van  Buren,  Cal- 
houn, Livingston  and  Buchanan)  ;  Gallatin,  R.  Rush,  Living- 
ston and  Everett,  ministers  to  England  (as  were  also  J.  Q. 
Adams,  Van  Buren  and  Buchanan)  ;  also  Middleton,  Cambrel- 
ing  and  Ingersoll,  ministers  to  Russia,  and  Archer,  Baylies,  Ben- 
ton, Berrien,  Lewis  Cass,  Rufus  Choate,  Caleb  dishing,  John 
J.  Crittenden,  Drayton,  Floyd,  John  Reed  of  Massachusetts 
(''the  life  member"),  Reynolds,  Rives,  Sevier,  Tappan,  J.  W. 
Taylor  of  New  York,  R.  J.  Walker,  Woodbury  and  many 
others  of  lesser  note,  while  not  a  single  authentic  sentence 
has  ever  been  produced  from  any  man  of  importance  enough 
ever  to  have  been  president  or  vice-president,  or  minister  to 
England  or  Russia,  or  secretary  of  state,  or  even  a  senator  for 
as  much  as  one  full  term,  which  expressed  any  doubt  of  our 
title  to  all  of  Oregon  south  of  49  degrees,  or  which  intimated 
that  we  would  surrender  anything  to  Great  Britain  south  of 
49  degrees. 

It  is  true  that  Tyler  had,  to  use  his  own  words,  "a  dream 
of  policy  never  embodied,"  about  selling  that  part  of  the  pres- 
ent state  of  Washington  north  and  west  of  the  Columbia  River 
to  England  for  a  good  round  sum ;  but  this  wholly  impossible 


28        MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES. 

"dream  of  policy"  necessarily  implied  not  surrendering  it,  but 
insisting  on  49  degrees  as  our  line  to  the  coast,  since  England 
certainly  would  not  buy  what  we  did  not  own. 

But  no  reader  of  Doctor  Mowry's  book,  or  of  any  other  book 
advocating  the  Whitman  legend,  will  find  in  it  any  intimation 
of  these  indisputable  facts  about  the  position  of  our  leading 
statesmen  on  the  Oregon  question. 

A  detailed  criticism  of  Doctor  Mowry's  treatment  of  all  the 
"original  sources"  as  to  "B"  would  require  very  much  more 
space  than  is  available,  and  as  no  one  has  ever  pretended  that 
Whitman  could  by  any  possibility  have  influenced  the  Oregon 
policy  of  any  other  administration  than  that  of  Tyler,  we  will 
conclude  this  part  of  the  criticism  with  a  brief  examination 
of  his  treatment  of  "original  sources"  as  to  the  attitude  toward 
and  actions  upon  the  Oregon  question  of  President  Tyler  and 
Secretary  of  State  D.  Webster  prior  to  March  1,  1843. 

On  pages  170-71  Doctor  Mo  wry  positively  asserts  that  Web- 
ster and  Tyler  thought  in  the  spring  of  1843  that  Oregon 
was  useless  to  the  United  States,  because  "Lord  Ashburton, 
Sir  George  Simpson  and  others  with  British  proclivities  had 
thoroughly  indoctrinated  our  statesmen  with  the  idea  that  the 
Rocky  Mountains  were  impassable  to  wagons,  that  Oregon 
could  not  be  peopled  from  the  States,  and  therefore  its  value 
to  this  country  was  very  small." 

The  reader  looks  through  his  book  from  title  page  to  finis 
in  vain  for  a  single  sentence  in  support  of  this  shocking  im- 
peachment of  the  patriotism  and  the  knowledge  of  our  states- 
men, except  what  Rev.  H.  H.  Spalding,  Rev.  C.  Eells  and 
W.  H.  Gray  thought  they  remembered  (from  twenty-three 
to  forty  years  after  the  event)  that  Whitman  told  them  after 
his  return  from  the  States. 

Not  a  word  is  there  in  Doctor  Mowry's  book  which  intimates 
that  either  Webster  or  Tyler  had  ever  taken  the  slightest  inter- 
est in  the  Oregon  question,  or  had  done  or  said  a  thing  toward 
securing  Oregon  to  the  United  States  or  had  any  special  in- 
formation about  it  till  Whitman  reached  Washington,  certainly, 
not  till  late  in  March,  and  more  likelv  not  till  April  10  to  15, 

1843. 
Let  us  examine  the  official  records  and  learn  the  facts. 

1.  In  both  his  first  and  second  annual  messages  in  Decem- 
ber, 184T,  and  December,  1842,  President  Tyler  had  strong 
paragraphs  on  Oregon,  in  the  first  recommending  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  line  of  military  posts  from  the  Missouri  to  the 
Columbia.  To  neither  of  these  messages  does  Doctor  Mowry 
even  allude. 

2.  Elijah  White,  M.  D.,  had  been  a  Methodist  missionary 
to  the  Oregon  Indians,  and  stationed  nearly  300  miles  west  of 
Whitman's  mission,  from  1838  to  1840,  when  he  was  dis- 
charged. 


HOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES.        29 

In  January,  1842  (as  we  know  from  contemporaneous  writ- 
ten and  printed  sources),  Doctor  White  appeared  in  Wash- 
ington with  letters  of  introduction  from  Daniel  Webster's  eld- 
est son  to  President  Tyler,  Secretary  Webster  and  Secretary  of 
the  Navy  A.  P.  Upshur,  and  after  interviews  with  them,  and 
with  Secretary  of  War  John  C.  Spencer,  and  Senator  Linn  and 
other  friends  of  Oregon,  by  order  of  the  president  he  was 
commissioned  Indian  sub-agent  for  the  region  west  of  the 
Rockies,  and  directed  to  raise  as  large  a  company  as  possible 
and  proceed  with  them  to  Oregon,  which  he  did,  starting  from 
near  Westport,  Mo.,  May  16,  1842,  as  the  leader  of  the  first 
large  overland  migration  consisting  of  112  persons. 

He  remained  in  Oregon  some  three  years,  and  was  the  only 
official  ever  commissioned  by  our  government  to  reside  in  Ore- 
gon, till  after  the  territory  was  organized  in  1848.  Being  a 
very  "shifty"  and  selfish  politician,  White  became  exceedingly 
unpopular  and  consequently  his  work  for  Oregon  has  re- 
ceived very  scant  mention. 

There  is  no  doubt  but  what  a  very  large  part — if  not  all 
— of  the  honest  advocacy  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story 
has  resulted  from  transferring  to  Doctor  Whitman  the  claims 
which  Doctor  White  made,  of  the  influence  on  Tyler's  Oregon 
policy,  of  his  interviews  with  President  Tyler  and  Secretary 
Webster,  just  before  Ashburton's  arrival  in  Washington, 
though  there  is  not  the  slightest  reason  for  believing  that  Doc- 
tor White  any  more  than  Dr.  Whitman  really  affected  in  any 
way  the  Oregon  policy  of  the  national  government. 

How  does  Doctor  Mowry  treat  this  matter?  Though  he 
mentions  "White's  Travels  in  Oregon"  (published  1848),  in  his 
list  of  authorities,  he  does  not  quote  one  word  from  it,  and 
nowhere  gives  his  readers  any  intimattion  that  Doctor  White 
had  ever  been  a  missionary  to  the  Oregon  Indians,  or  was 
ever  in  Oregon  before  the  autumn  of  1842,  or  that  he  ever  was 
in  Washington,  or  ever  saw  President  Tyler  and  Secretary 
Webster,  or  that  he  held  any  official  position  in  Oregon,  but 
only  says  of  him  (p.  188)  :  "Doctor  White,  with  a  considerable 
party  of  settlers,  arrived  near  Whitman's  station  early  in  Sep- 
tember"  (1842). 

3.  When  in  August,  1838,  Lieut.  Charles  Wilkes  set  sail 
with  six  ships  and  nearly  600  men  in  command  of  the  greatest 
exploring  expedition  our  government  has  ever  sent  out,  Van 
Buren's  administration  gave  him  positive  instructions  to  spend 
six  months  in  exploring  "our  territory  on  the  northwest  coast  of 
America,"  and  the  Columbia  River,  and  the  coast  of  California 
as  far  south  as  San  Francisco  Bay. 

April  28,  1 841,  twenty-four  days  after  Harrison's  untimely 
death  brought  Tyler  to  the  presidency,  Wilkes,  with  part 
of    his    squadron,    sighted    the    mouth  of  the  Columbia,  and 


30        MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES. 

with  a  ''sloop  of  war,  a  brig  of  war,  two  launches,  ten  boats, 
and  upward  of  300  men"  he  was  busily  engaged  till 
October  10,  1841,  in  a  far  more  extensive  and  thorough  ex- 
ploration of  Oregon  by  land  and  water  than  any  other 
single  expedition  has  ever  made,  even  to  this  day.  He  sur- 
veyed and  chartered  Puget's  Sound  and  the  navigable 
waters  of  the  Columbia,  visited  all  the  mission  stations  of 
the  Methodists  and  of  the  American  Board,  and  all  of  the 
posts  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  south  of  49  degrees,  except 
Hall  and  Boise  (which  hundreds  of  Americans  had  visited), 
and  all  the  settlements  in  Oregon. 

He  sent  a  party  from  Puget's  Sound  eastward  to  the  Col- 
umbia and  back  to  the  sound  by  a  different  route,  through 
the  center  of  the  region  north  and  west  of  the  Columbia  (be- 
ing all  that  was  really  in  dispute,  and)  of  the  real  value  of 
which  (according  to  Spalding's  letter  of  April  7,  1846,  edited 
by  Whitman,  and  published  in  Palmer's  Journal  in  1847)  tne 
missionaries  of  the  American  Board  knew  absolutely  nothing 
until  the  party  sent  from  the  settlements  in  the  Willamette  Val- 
ley explored  it  in  the  autumn  of  1845,  *•  e->  three  years  after 
Whitman  started  to  the  States. 

He  also  sent  a  party  overland  from  the  Columbia  up  the 
Willamette  and  down  the  Sacramento  to  San  Francisco. 

He  dropped  anchor  at  New  York  June  10,  1842,  and  three 
days  later  filed  in  the  navy  department  a  most  enthusiastic 
"special  report"  on  Oregon  (covering  44  pages  foolscap),  urg- 
ing the  immense  value  of  the  Puget's  Sound  region,  and 
declaring  that  in  Oregon  a  man  could  make  a  living  and  ac- 
quire wealth  with  only  one-third  the  labor  required  in  the 
States,  and  that  "No  portion  of  the  world  beyond  the  tropics 
can  be  found  that  will  yield  so  readily  with  moderate  labor  to 
the  wants  of  man"  as  the  Oregon  territory  would. 

These  statements, — as  powerful  stimulants  to  migration  as 
could  well  be  imagined, — with  enough  more  to  make  14 
pages  the  House  of  Representatives  took,  and  on  January  4, 
1843  (when  Whitman  was  near  Bent's  Fort),  added  it  to  the 
64  pages  of  the  Report  of  the  Military  Committee  of  the 
House  on  Oregon  (of  which  5,000  copies  had  been  printed  in 
May,  1842),  and  ordered  another  edition  of  .5,000  copies 
printed. 

In  a  part  of  this  Special  Report  which  was  not  printed,  in 
discussing  passes  over  the  Rocky  Mountains,  Wilkes  wrote: 
"Finally  the  two  southern  routes,  which  are  preferable,  sus- 
ceptible of  being  used  at  almost  all  seasons,  and  a  good  wagon 
road  may  be  constructed  with  little  expense.  ...  It  is  read- 
ily to  be  perceived  that  the  difficulty  of  communication  with 
the  Territory  is  far  less  for  us  than  for  the  British."  There 
was  no  need  for  our  government  to  print  this,  because  it  had 


HOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES.        31 

printed  the  same  matter  substantially  in  Congressional  Debates 
and  Committee  Reports  many  times  during  the  preceding  18 
years. 

How  does  Dr.  Mowry  treat  this  matter?  On  pp.  190-191  he 
has  appropriated  (without  permission  from  and  without  credit 
to  the  author),  a  page  from  a  copyrighted  manuscript  sent 
him  in  1899,  by  the  writer  of  this  criticism,  which  page  does  not 
quote  one  word  from  Wilkes'  Report,  but  merely  states  my  in- 
ferences (written  on  first  reading  the  manuscript  of  this 
Special  Report  in  1887,  at  the  Navy  Department),  as  to  why 
the  Administration  would  not  allow  the  whole  report  to  be 
printed  in  1843;  but  though  the  immediate  context  of  this 
page  of  my  inferences  in  the  manuscript  sent  him  contained 
copious  quotations  from  this  Special  Report  of  Wilkes,  and 
from  his  other  unpublished  dispatches,  giving  full  information 
about  Oregon  and  the  operations  and  aims  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Company,  Dr.  Mowry  not  only  nowhere  copies  one  word  of 
that  context,  but  he  nowhere  quotes  one  word  from  any  of 
Wilkes'  Reports,  nor  prints  one  word  which  will  give  his 
readers  any  information  as  to  the  cause  of,  the  time  of,  or 
the  extent. and  values  of  Wilkes'  explorations  of  Oregon,  or 
of  the  time  when  he  filed  this  Special  Report,  or  of  the  fact 
that  for  nine  months  before  Whitman  could  by  any  possibility 
have  reached  Washington,  Tyler's  Administration  could,  on 
any  day,  have  had  interviews  with  Wilkes  and  the  other  officers 
of  his  expedition,  who  knew  a  vast  deal  more  about  all  of 
Oregon  that  was  really  in  dispute  than  all  the  missionaries — 
Methodist  and  American  Board  put  together, — did  then,  or  for 
many  years  after. 

The  facts  about  Wilkes'  exploration  and  Special  Report  are 
so  completely  destructive  of  that  essential  postulate  of  the 
Whitman  Legend  that  the  Government  at  Washington  was 
indifferent  as  to  the  fate  of  Oregon,  and  ignorant  as  to  its 
value,  that  not  a  single  advocate  of  that  Legend  has  ever  given 
his  readers  any  information  of  the  slightest  consequence  about 
Wilkes,  and  most  of  them  (including  the  two  latest  advocates 
of  the  Legend,  Johnson's  "Century  of  Expansion,"  and  Car- 
penter's "the  American  Advance,")  do  not  even  mention  his 
name ! 

Gray  and  Mrs.  Dye,  carefully  refraining  from  stating  any- 
thing of  any  real  value  about  Wilkes'  work,  wantonly  slander 
him  as  follows :  "To  the  disgrace  of  the  leader  of  that 
squadron,  the  general  impression  of  all  the  early  settlers  of  this 
country  is,  to  the  present  day,  that  he  understood  and  tasted 
the  qualities  of  Dr.  McLoughlin's  liquors,  and  received  the 
polite  attentions  of  the  gentlemen  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Com- 
pany with  far  more  pleasure  than  he  looked  into  or  regarded 


32        HOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES. 

the  wants  of  this  infant  settlement  of  his  countrymen."  (Cf. 
Gray's  History  of  Oregon,  p.  204.) 

"  'Dr.  McLoughlin's  wine  has  affected  his  judgment,'  said 
the  men  of  the  mission." 

Then  representing  Wilkes  as  conversing  with  George  Aber- 
nethy,  the  steward  of  the  Methodist  Mission  (who  had  then 
been  in  Oregon  less  than  a  year  and  a  half),  Mrs.  Dye  con- 
tinues :  "  'Tell  me,  what  do  you  Americans  think  of  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Company  ?' " 

"  'The  Hudson's  Bay  Company  is  Great  Britain's  instru- 
mentality for  securing  Oregon,'  was  the  answer." 

"  'But,'  urged  the  commodore,  'the  missionaries  have  re- 
ceived untold  favors  from  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  and  if 
they  are  gentlemen  it  is  their  duty  to  return  them.'  " 

"The  missionary  faced  about  in  the  commodore's  path.  'Re- 
turn them?  Certainly.  I  will  exchange  favors  with  Dr. 
McLoughlin  or  any  other  man  or  set  of  men,  but  /  zvill  not  sell 
country  for  it.' " 

"Wilkes  was  almost  angry  with  this  blunt  missionary."  (Cf. 
McLoughlin  and  Old  Oregon,  pp.  176-7.) 

There  is  not  the  remotest  probability  that  any  part  of  this 
dialogue  ever  was  spoken,  or  that  there  is  a  shadow  of  founda- 
tion for  it,  except  in  Mrs.  Dye's  unrestrained  imagination. 

(4)  In  April,  1842,  Lord  Ashburton  arrived  in  Washington, 
and  (after  various  informal  conferences)  on  June  13,  1842, 
(the  very  day  Wilkes  filed  his  Special  Report  on  Oregon  in 
the  Navy  Department),  began  the  formal  negotiations  which 
ended  August  9,  with  the  signing  of  the  Webster-Ashburton 
treaty. 

As  it  was  generally  understood  that  he  was  to  treat  on  all 
points  in  dispute,  there  was  much  disappointment  that  Oregon 
was  not  included  in  the  treaty,  but  though  Benton  on  this  ac- 
count assailed  it  most  bitterly  in  the  Senate,  he  could  only  rally 
9  votes  against  it  to  39  for  it. 

In  December,  1842,  Benton  returned  to  the  subject,  and 
asserted  that  Webster  had  proposed  to  accept  of  the  line  of  the 
Columbia  instead  of  standing  firmly  for  49  degrees  to  the 
Pacific.  To  this  partisan  accusation  Webster  could  not  in  per- 
son reply  in  the  Senate  Chamber,  but,  fortunately  for  the 
vindication  of  the  truth  of  history,  his  life-long  friend,  Rufus 
Choate,  had  succeeded  him  in  the  Senate,  and  twice,  on  Janu- 
ary 18  and  February  3,  1843,  while  Whitman  (of  whose  exist- 
ence even  there  is  no  evidence  that  either  Tyler  or  Webster 
was  then  aware)  was  riding  east  across  what  is  now  Kansas, 
Choate,  replying  to  Benton's  accusations,  said  (on  January  18), 
as  summarized  by  the  official  reporter  in  Congressional  Globe, 
27th  Congress,  3d  Session,  pp.  171-2)  :  "In  commenting  upon 
the  speech  of  the  Senator  from  Missouri,   (Mr.  Benton),  who 


MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES.        33 

had  preceded  him,  he  took  occasion  to  remove  an  erroneous 
impression,  which,  he  conceived,  was  calculated  to  do  great  in- 
justice to  a  distinguished  man,  Mr.  Webster,  who  could  not 
there  defend  himself.  He  alluded  to  the  fears  expressed  by 
the  Senator  from  Missouri,  that  .  .  .  the  rumor  must  be  cor- 
rect which  had  got  abroad,  that  a  proposition  had  been  made 
or  entertained  by  the  Secretary  of  State,  to  settle  down  upon 
the  Columbia  River  as  the  boundary  line.  Now  he  was  glad 
to  have  it  in  his  power  to  undeceive  the  Senator,  and  to  assure 
him,  which  he  did  from  authority,  for  he  had  been  requested 
by  the  Secretary  himself  to  do  it  for  him,  that  he  never  either 
made  or  entertained  a  proposition  to  admit  of  any  line  south 
of  the  49th  parallel  of  latitude,  as  a  negotiable  boundary  line 
for  the  territory  of  the  United  States." 

On  February  3,  1843,  Mr.  Choate  made  another  speech 
(which  was  printed  verbatim  in  Cong.  Globe,  App.  pages  222- 
229),  and  returning  to  the  subject  of  Benton's  accusations,  he 
said:  "I  desired  chiefly  to  assure  the  Senator  and  the  Senate 
that  the  apprehension  intimated  by  him  that  a  disclosure  of 
these  informal  communications  would  disgrace  the  American 
Secretary,  by  showing  that  he  had  offered  a  boundary  line  south 
of  the  parallel  of  49  degrees  is  totally  unfounded.  He  would 
be  glad  to  hear  me  say  that  I  am  authorized  and  desired  to 
declare,  that  in  no  communication,  formal  or  informal,  was 
such  an  offer  made,  and  that  none  such  was  ever  meditated/' 

Precisely  why  Oregon  was  not  included  in  the  Ashburton 
treaty  could  not  be  stated  with  due  regard  to  the  diplomatic 
proprieties,  either  by  Choate  in  1843,  or  Webster  in  his  great 
speech  in  defense  of  the  Ashburton  treaty  in  1846,  nor  by 
Everett,  his  life-long  friend,  in  his  brief  biography  of  Webster, 
in  which  all  he  says  is  "Had  he  (i.  e.,  Webster)  supposed  an 
arrangement  could  have  been  effected  on  this  basis"  (i.  e.,  49 
degrees  to  the  coast)  "with  Lord  Ashburton,  he  would  gladly 
have  included  it  in  the  treaty  of  Washington"  (Cf.  Webster's 
Works,  Vol.  1,  Introduction  page  CXLVITI),  because  Ash- 
burton's  instructions  on  Oregon  were  not  printed  by  the  British 
government  and  reprinted  by  our  government  in  "Berlin 
Arbitration"  till  1871-2.  These  instructions  authorized  Ash- 
burton to  offer :  ( 1 )  The  line  of  the  Columbia  River  from  its 
mouth  to  the  Snake,  and  thence  due  east  to  the  summit  of  the 
Rockies.  This  would  have  given  us  about  nine-fourteenths  of 
the  territory  south  of  49  degrees. 

If  he  could  not  secure  that  line  he  was  (2)  authorized  to  re- 
new the  offer  made  us  in  1824  and  1827  by  England,  of  the 
line  of  49  degrees  from  the  summit  of  the  Rockies  to  the  most 
northeasterly  branch  of  the  Columbia,  and  from  thence  the 
river  to  the  ocean,  which  would  have  given  us  a  trifle  more 
than    four-fifths    of   the   territory    south    of   49   degrees,    and 


.q        MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES. 

13)  he  was  positively  forbidden  to  accept  of  the  line  of  49  de- 
grees to  the  coast.  (Cf.  "Berlin  Arbitration,"  pages  218-219.) 

The  writer  hereof  called  Dr.  Mowry's  attention,  in  1887,  to 
these  positive  denials  by  Webster  himself  through  his  life-long 
friend  Choate  of  that  totally  false  charge  that  in  the  Winter  of 
1842-43  and  Spring  of  1843  Webster  was  indifferent  as  to  the 
acquisition  of  Oregon,  which  is  the  very  cornerstone  of  the 
Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story,  and  has  called  his  attention 
to  them  several  times  since,  but  he  never  refers  to  them,  but 
claims  on  the  "memories"  of  Gray,  Spalding  and  C.  Eells  that 
Webster,  in  March,  1843,  thought  Oregon  worthless  to  us. 

(5)  In  the  winter  of  1842-43  there  was  a  great  debate  on 
Linn's  bill  for  the  occupation  of  Oregon  in  the  Senate  (which, 
it  must  never  be  forgotten,  is  a  part  of  the  treaty-making  power 
in  our  government),  the  report  of  which  fills  165  columns  of 
the  Congressional  Globe  and  its  appendix,  and  in  which  out 
of  50  Senators  27  took  part,  and  but  one — McDuffie  of  South 
Carolina — spoke  depreciatingly  of  Oregon,  and  he  had  then 
only  been  a  member  of  the  Senate  22  days,  having  been  elected 
to  serve  for  four  years  of  a  vacancy  caused  by  death,  and  he 
was  never  able  to  secure  re-election. 

Over  and  over  again  it  was  declared  in  this  debate,  alike  by 
those  who  favored  and  those  who  opposed  the  pending  bill, 
that  "The  Senate  was  unanimous  in  the  opinion  that  our  title 
to  Oregon  was  incontestable  at  least  as  far  north  as  49  degrees," 
— even  McDuffie  asserted  this, — and  the  chief  opposition  to  the 
bill  was  from  strong  friends  of  the  Oregon  acquisition,  who 
feared  that  to  pass  it  without  first  giving  the  twelve  months' 
notice  (which  was  all  that  was  needed  to  abrogate  the  treaty 
of  1827)  would  be  such  an  unjustifiable  action  as  to  cause 
Great  Britain  to  declare  war,  and  that  we  might  thereby  run 
great  risk  of  losing  Oregon.  The  bill  passed  the  Senate  Feb- 
ruary 3,  1843,  by  24  to  22,  and  of  the  four  absentees  two  were 
declared  to  favor  and  two  to  oppose  it.  But  when  we  come  to 
analyze  the  vote,  Ave  find  that  of  the  22  voting  "No"  nine  had  de- 
clared in  their  speeches  that  if  the  provisions  which  were  in 
plain  violation  of  the  treaty  of  1827  were  dropped,  they  would 
support  it,  so  that,  without  knowing  on  what  grounds  the  other 
13  voted  "No,"  it  is  certain  that  24  plus  9  plus  2  equals  35, 
or  one  more  than  two-thirds  of  the  entire  Senate,  were  ready 
on  February  3,  1843,  to  vote  for  any  legislation  about  Oregon 
which  we  had  a  right  to  pass  without  first  giving  the  twelve 
months'  notice  and  abrogating  the  treaty  which  preserved  our 
rights  to  the  territory  and  prevented  Great  Britain  from 
strengthening  its  claims  while  the  treaty  remained  in  force. 
How  does  Dr.  Mowry  treat  this  great  debate,  in  which  occurred 
Webster's  twice  repeated  explicit  denial  (by  the  mouth  of 
Choate)   of  Benton's  slanderous  and  baseless  accusation  that 


MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES.       *35 

Webster  was  ready  to  accept  the  Columbia  or  some  other  line 
south  of  49  degrees  as  the  north  boundary  of  Oregon,  which 
is  the  very  cornerstone  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story  ? 

He  neither  quotes  a  word  from  this  debate,  nor  gives  any 
intimation,  of  its  importance,  and  only  says  (p.  189)  :  "During 
the  winter  of  1842-3  a  great  debate  on  the  Oregon  question 
took  place  in  the  Senate,  which  lasted  a  number  of  weeks,  and 
brought  out  a  great  diversity  of  views  concerning  the  Oregon 
question." 

Unable  to  find  a  sentence  of  any  contemporaneous  govern- 
ment document  or  letter,  or  even  newspaper  statement,  that 
Whitman  ever  had  any  interview  with  President  Tyler  or  Sec- 
retary Webster,  or  that  he  in  the  least  degree  influenced  the 
Oregon  policy  of  Tyler's  administration,  after  quoting  freely 
from  the  unsupported  "recollections"  of  Gray,  Spalding,  C. 
Eells,  Dr.  Geiger  and  others  between  1865  and  1882  as  to  what 
they  thought  Whitman  had  told  them  in  1843  to  l&47>  Dr. 
Mowry  prints  on  pages  172-3  a  letter  dated  June  6,  1898,  from 
Dr.  L.  G.  Tyler,  President  of  William  and  Mary  College, 
Virginia,  and  some  extracts  from  his  "Letters  and  Times  of 
the  Tylers,"  which  he  declares  establish  his  claims  about 
Whitman  having  interviewed  Tyler  and  influenced  his  Oregon 
policy. 

Not  only  are  the  letter  and  the  quotations  entirely  incon- 
clusive, but  less  than  a  year  after  the  date  of  that  letter  he 
quotes,  the  writer  of  this  review  furnished  to  President  L.  G. 
Tyler  extensive  typewritten  copies  of  the  correspondence  of 
Whitman  and  his  associates  with  the  American  Board,  which 
Dr.  Mowry  and  the  other  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Legend 
have  so  carefully  suppressed,  and  also  full  information  about 
Dr.  White  and  his  work  for  Oregon  (of  which  he  wrote  me 
that  he  had  never  heard  before),  with  the  result  that  he  was 
speedily  convinced  that  both  he  and  his  half-brother,  John  Tyler, 
Jr.,  private  secretary  to  President  John  Tyler,  had  been  im- 
posed upon  by  Barrows'  "Oregon"  fwich  was  published  (in 
1883)  and  read  by  them  just  before  he  had  his  first  conversation 
about  Whitman  with  John  Tyler,  Jr.),  and  had  confounded  Dr. 
White  with  Dr.  Whitman ;  and  that  Dr.  Whitman  had  no  in- 
fluence on  the  Oregon  policy  of  President  Tyler. 

(Cf.  the  review  of  "The  Marcus  Whitman  Legend,"  by 
Professor  Hodder,  in  the  Dial  for  January  16,  1902,  in  which 
*(p.  42)  Professor  Hodder  writes,  "That  Dr.  Tyler  does  not 
regard  it"  (i.  e.,  what  Dr.  Mowry  has  quoted  from  him)  "as 
sustaining  the  claim  that  Whitman  influenced  the  administra- 
tion, appears  from  a  recent  letter  to  the  writer  of  this  review, 
in  which  he  says,  T  do  not  believe  that  Dr.  Whitman  controlled 
the  policy  of  President  Tyler's  administration  in  any  way.'  " 

Had  Dr.  Mowry  cared  to  quote  original  and  strictly  con- 


36       MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES. 

temporaneous  sources  on  President  Tyler's  administration,  he 
could  easily  have  found  in  that  same  Vol.  2,  of  "Letters  and 
Times  of  the  Tylers,"  on  pages  447,  448  and  449,  over  the 
signature  of  President  John  Tyler  himself,  in  three  letters  to 
his  son  Robert,  the  conclusive  evidence  that  as  late  as  Decem- 
ber, 1845,  and  January,  1846  (i.  e.,  more  than  two  and  a  half 
years  after  Whitman's  visit  to  the  States),  neither  Whitman 
nor  anyone  else  had  changed  Tyler's  ideas  as  to  the  best  policy 
to  pursue  on  the  Oregon  and  California  acquisition  problem, 
and  that  precisely  what  his  correspondence  shows  that  he 
hoped  to  accomplish  in  1842-3,  he  still,  in  1845-6,  thought 
should  be  attempted  by  President  Polk.  The  first  letter  is 
dated  December  11,  1845,  and  after  commenting  on  President 
Polk's  discussion  of  the  Oregon  question  in  his  first  annual 
message,  continues,  "I  looked  exclusively  to  an  adjustment  by 
the  49th  parallel,  and  never  dreamed  for  a  moment  of  surren- 
dering  the    free    navigation   of   the    Columbia I 

never  dreamed  of  ceding  this  country,1  unless  for  the  greater 
equivalent  of  California,  which  I  fancied  Great  Britain  might 
be  able  to  obtain  for  us  through  her  influence  with  Mexico ; 
and  this  was  but  a  dream  of  policy  which  was  never  embodied. 
I  confess  that  throughout  the  whole  of  this  business  I  have 
been  firmly  impressed  with  the  belief  that  our  true  policy  was 
to  let  things  take  their  natural  course,  under  an  improved 
treaty  of  joint  policy." 

The  second  was  dated  December  23,  1845,  an(l  again  dis- 
cussing the  Oregon  question  and  Polk's  message  thereon,  he 
wrote,  "I  think  it  would  be  a  high  stroke  of  policy  to  interest 
Great  Britain  in  our  negotiation  with  Mexico,  so  as  to  lead 
her  to  concede  California,  and  thus  to  bring  about  a  tripartite 
treaty,  according  to  Great  Britain  the  line  she  offers"  (i.  e.,  49 
degrees  to  the  most  northeasterly  branch  of  the  Columbia,  and 
thence  the  river  to  the  Pacific),  "and  we  take  California,  Great 
Britain  to  pay  so  much  towards  our  purchase.  It  would  re- 
quire great  skill  to  bring  this  about." 

If  it  would  have  required  "great  skill"  for  Polk,  fresh  from 
a  triumphant  election  by  the  people,  and  with  a  good  working 
majority  in  both  Houses  of  Congress  eager  to  support  him,  to 
carry  out  this  "dream  of  policy,"  the  reader  can  see  how  utterly 
impossible  it  would  have  been  for  Tyler,  hated  by  the  Whig 
leaders,  and  distrusted  by  the  most  influential  Democrats,  and 
only  half  supported  part  of  the  time  by  discordant  factions  of» 
both  parties,  to  ever  have  "embodied"  his  "dream  of  policy" 
about  Oregon  in  a  treaty  that  would  have  had  any  chance  of 
securing  two-thirds  of  the  Senate  in  favor  of  its  ratification. 

The  third  was  dated  January  1,  1846,  and  after  expressing 
his  objections  to  war  with  Mexico  and  England,  if  it  can  hon- 
orably be  avoided,  he  continues,  "The  United  States  requires 


MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES.        37 

still  a  peace  of  20  years,  and  then  they  hold  in  their  hands  the 
destiny  of  the  human  race.  Ifrit  if  war  does  come,  we  shall 
fight  on  the  side  of  right.  Our  claim  to  Oregon  to  the  49th 
degree  is  clear;  what  lies  beyond  is  attended  with  colorable 
title  on  the  part  of  Great  Britain  by  the  exploration  of  Frazer's 
river  by  McKenzie;  but  it  is  only  colorable." 

DR.    MOWRY'S   TREATMENT   OF   THE    "ORIGINAL    SOURCES^    AS    TO 
WHITMAN'S  TRUE  RELATIONS  TO  THE  1843  MIGRATION. 

As  to  (C)  the  only  really  "original  sources"  that  it  is  certain 
Dr.  Mowry  has  examined  are : 

(a)  Four  letters  from  Whitman,  the  first  from  St.  Louis, 
May  12,  1843,  tne  other  three  from  Shawnee  Indian  Mission, 
May  2J,  28  and  30,  1843;  tne  ^rst  an<^  *ast  to  ^ev-  D.  Greene, 
Secretary,  and  the  second  and  third  to  two  of  Whitman's 
brothers-in-law. 

All  about  the  migration  in  the  first  is  the  following:  "I 
have  made  up  my  mind  that  it  would  not  be  expedient  to  take 
any  families  this  year,  except  such  as  can  go  at  this  time." 

On  page  181,  Dr.  Mowry  prints  part  of  this  letter,  but  care- 
fully omits  the  above  paragraph. 

In  that  of  May  27,  i.  e.,  five  days  after  the  migration  had 
started  from  its  camp,  near  Independence,  Mo.,  for  Oregon,  all 
that  relates  to  it  is  the  following: 

"I  cannot  tell  you  very  much  about  the  migration  to  Oregon. 
They  appear  very  willing,  and,  I  have  no  doubt,  are  generally  of 
an  enterprising  character.  There  are  over  200  men,  besides 
women  and  children,  as  it  is  said.  No  one  can  well  tell  until 
we  are  all  on  the  road  and  get  together  how  many  there  are. 
Some  have  been  gone  a  week,  and  others  have  not  yet  started. 
I  hope  to  start  to-morrow.  I  shall  have  an  easy  journey,  as  I 
have  not  much  to  do,  having  no  one  depending  on  me." 

To  this  letter  Dr.  Mowry  never  alludes. 

I  have  conducted  sundry  excursions  to  the  Rocky  Mountain 
and  Pacific  coast  regions  myself,  but  while  they  were  gathering 
I  did  not  stay  ten  miles  away  from  their  rendezvous,  nor  wait 
for  an  invitation  to  visit  and  address  them,  nor  say — after 
they  were  fairly  started — that  "I  could  not  tell  very  much  about 
them,"  and,  still  less,  that  "I  expected  to  have  an  easy  journey, 
not  having  much  to  do,  having  no  one  depending  upon  me," 
and  if  there  were  no  other  letter  but  this — the  authenticity  of 
which  is  beyond  dispute — it  would  utterly  destroy  the  whole 
story  that  Whitman  had  any  special  influence  on  or  concern 
about  the  originating  or  organizing  of  that  migration,  or  felt 
any  responsibility  for  its  getting  through  to  Oregon,  with  or 
without  wagons. 

In  that  of  May  28  he  wrote: 


38        MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES. 

"I  have  been,  as  it  were,  waiting  for  three  weeks 

I  shall  start  tomorrow  or  next  day.     Some  of  the  emigrants 

have  been  gone  a  week,  and  others  are  just  going 

I  hope  to  be  expeditious  in  traveling.  After  we  get  to  Ft. 
Hall  I  shall  try  to  go  on  rapidly,  if  not  before."  From  this 
Dr.  Mowry  (erroneously  stating  that  it  was  written  from  St. 
Louis)  quotes,  on  pages  196-7,  considerably  more  than  there  is 
space  for  here,  but  carefully  omits  the  last  two  sentences  above 
quoted,  which  show  that  a  week  after  the  migration  had  started 
(except  the  few  stragglers  which  always  bring  up  the  rear  of 
such  a  great  movement),  Whitman  intended  on  reaching  Fort 
Hall  (beyond  which  there  was  no  danger  from  Indians)  to 
leave  the  migration  behind,  though  that  was  the  only  part 
where  there  was  not  a  well-known  wagon  road,  and  where  he 
could  be  of  any  special  service  to  it. 

In  that  of  May  30  he  wrote: 

"You  will  be  surprised  to  see  that  we  are  not  yet  started. 
.  .  .  I  shall  start  to-morrow.  I  regret  that  I  could  not 
have  spent  some  of  the  time  spent  here  in  suspense  with  my 
friends  in  the  East.  I  have  only  a  lad  of  thirteen,  my  nephew, 
with  me.    I  take  him  to  have  someone  to  stay  with  Mrs.  W. 

"I  cannot  give  you  much  of  an  account  of  the  emigrants 
until  we  get  on  the  road.  It  is  said  that  there  are  over  200 
men,  besides  women  and  children." 

The  proper  place  for  this  was  on  page.  197,  after  that  of  May 
28,  but  Dr.  Mowry  neither  prints  it  there,  nor  puts  a  footnote 
of  reference  to  it,  but  on  pages  262-3  he  puts  it  in  the  Appendix, 
where  few  of  his  readers  will  peruse  it,  and  fewer  note  its 
significance  in  relation  to  the  claim  that  Whitman  was  promi- 
nent in  originating,  organizing  and  leading  the  1843  migration. 

(Cf.,  for  the  full  text  of  the  letters  of  May  27  and  28, 
Tr.  Or.  Pi.  Asscn.,  1891,  pp.  177-9,  and  for  those  of  May  12 
and  30,  Vol.  138,  MSS.  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.) 

(b)  The  only  detailed  contemporaneous  account  of  the 
migration  of  1843  which  has  ever  been  printed,  being  Part  2 
of  George  Wilkes'  History  of  Oregon,  published  in  New  York 
in  the  spring  of  1845. 

This  account  covers  50  pages,  or  about  40,000  words,  and  is 
unquestionably  the  account  which  Burnett  (Old  Pioneer,  p. 
177)  states  that  he  wrote  in  the  winter  of  1843-44,  "in  letters 
to  the  New  York  Herald,  covering  about  125  pages  of  fools- 
cap." 

Burnett  kept  a  "concise  journal"  of  the  whole  trip  from 
Missouri  to  Walla  Walla,  and  so  far  as  known  no  other  journal 
of  that  trip  was  kept,  or,  if  kept,  preserved. 

The  Herald  only  printed  five  of  these  letters  in  its  issues  for 
December  28,  1844,  January  5,  6  (two  letters)  and  18,  1845, 
breaking  off  without  any  explanation  or  apology,  when  the 


MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES.        39 

migration  had  not  crossed  the  south  fork  of  the  Platte  and  had 
not  traveled  one-fourth  of  the  way  to  the  settlements  in  Oregon. 
These  letters  were  reprinted  in  the  Oregon  Historical  Quarterly, 
December,  1902,  with  certain  editorial  comments,  which,  as  far 
as  they  reflect  on  Wilkes'  character  and  treatment  of  the  Bur- 
nett account,  seem  to  me  wholly  unwarranted  by  the  facts  in 
the  case. 

A  careful  comparison,  sentence  by  sentence,  of  the  Herald 
letters  with  the  narrative  in  Wilkes  covering  the  same  part  of 
the  journey  shows  that  every  fact  of  the  slightest  importance 
in  the  Herald  letters  is  also  in  the  account  in  Wilkes,  while  a 
similar  comparison  of  every  statement  of  any  fact  of  the 
slightest  importance  in  the  rest  of  the  narrative  in  Wilkes,  with 
contemporaneous  letters,  and  with  parts  of  Fremont's  report 
covering  the  same  facts  shows  the  account  in  Wilkes  to  be 
correct  on  every  point  of  the  slightest  consequence. 

This  matter  is  fully  discussed  in  the  chapter  on  "The  Truth 
About  the  Discovery  of  Routes  Practicable  For  and  the  De- 
velopment of  the  First  Transcontinental  Wagon  Road  as 
Shown  by  the  Original  Documents"  in  my  forthcoming  book 
on  "The  Acquisition  of  the  Old  Oregon  Territory  and  the 
Long  Suppressed  Evidence  About  Marcus  Whitman"  and  space 
will  not  permit  farther  discussion  of  it  here. 

Turning  now  to  the  account  in  Wilkes,  we  find  that  Burnett 
says  (p.  6y,  George  Wilkes),  "A  meeting  was  held  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  day"  (May  18,  1843)  "which  resulted  in  ap- 
pointing a  committee  to  return  to  Independence,  and  make  in- 
quiries of  Dr.  Whitman,  missionary,  who  had  an  establishment 
on  the  Walla  Walla,  respecting  the  practicabilities  of  the 
route." 

Although  this  account  in  Wilkes  does  not  say  another  word 
about  Whitman,  or  about  any  information  received  from  or 
services  rendered  by  him  till  September  23,  1843  (when  the 
migration  was  31  miles  west  of  Fort  Boise),  Dr.  Mowry  en- 
larges (p.  193)  on  what  he  imagines  Whitman  told  this  com- 
mittee. 

(Page  85,  George  Wilkes).  Under  date  of  September  23, 
1843,  after  stating  that  they  were  obliged  to  make  a  most  un- 
comfortable camp,  with  no  water  except  in  a  puddle  in  the  bed 
of  a  dry  creek,  Burnett  continues:  "Two  miles  further  on 
would  have  taken  us  to  a  good  encampment,  with  plenty  of  fine 
range  and  water,  but  the  Indian  pilot  who  had  been  employed 
for  us  by  Dr.  Whitman  was  ahead,  and  out  of  reach,  with  the 
foremost  wagons." 

There  is  not  another  mention  of  Whitman,  directly  or  indi- 
rectly, in  the  whole  narrative,  till  (George  Wilkes,  p.  89)  it 
describes  their  arrival  at  his  mission  station,  October  8,  1843, 
and  their  purchase  from  him  of  wheat  at  $1  and  potatoes  at  40 


4o        MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES. 

cents  a  bushel,  and  no  intimation  in  the  whole  narrative  that 
Whitman  had  anything  whatever  to  do  in  originating,  organiz- 
ing, or  (except  in  the  hiring  of  the  Indian  guide  beyond 
Boise)  in  leading  this  migration  anywhere  from  the  Missouri 
frontier  to  the  Columbia  River.  Dr.  Mowry  wholly  ignores 
this  on  page  85,  and  though  he  quotes  to  the  extent  of  more 
than  600  words  from  other  parts  of  this  account  (which  he 
three  times  erroneously  ascribes  to  Wilkes,  who,  he  says,  was 
a  member  of  the  migration,  though,  in  fact,  he  was  a  New 
York  City  Democratic  politician  and  newspaper  man  and  had 
nothing  to  do  with  the  migration),  there  is  not  in  all  he  quotes 
the  least  reference  to  Whitman,  except  in  the  extract  from 
page  67  above. 

DR.     MOWRY'S     DISINGENUOUS     TREATMENT    OF     SUNDRY     "WIT- 
NESSES"   WHOSE  ALLEGED   "RECOLLECTIONS^    HE    HAS    SUB- 
STITUTED  FOR  THE  ORIGINAL  SOURCES  OF   OREGON 
HISTORY. 

Having  seen  how  Dr.  Mowry  has  juggled  with  the  real 
"original  sources"  as  to  the  origin  and  purpose  of  Whitman's 
ride,  let  us  briefly  glance  at  his  treatment  of  the  chief  witnesses 
whose  vague  and  contradictory  and  demonstrably  false  "recol- 
lections" he  substitutes  for  the  genuine  "original  sources." 

There  would  never  have  been  any  Whitman  Saved  Oregon 
story  without  the  alleged  "recollections"  of  three  men  (never 
published  till  1864-5-6),  viz.:  Rev.  H.  H.  Spalding,  Rev. 
Cushing  Eells  and  Mr.  W.  H.  Gray. 

Two  of  these  three  signed  the  brief  "Resolve"  of  September 
28,  1842  (quoted  on  p.  13  ante),  which  authorized  Whit- 
man to  go  to  the  States,  not  on  any  political  errand,  but  "to 
confer  with  the  committee  of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  in  regard  to 
the  interests  of  this  mission,"  while  the  third  one,  W.  H. 
Gray,  though  he  did  not  sign  it,  (because  no  longer  a  member 
of  the  mission,  having  just  deserted  it),  unquestionably  knew 
of  it,  and  understood  perfectly  well  the  true  origin  and  pur- 
pose of  Whitman's  ride.  Yet  each  of  these  three  men,  in  their 
first  published  versions  of  the  Whitman  saved  Oregon  story 
explicitly  stated  that  the  sole  purpose  of  that  ride  was  to  save 
Oregon  to  the  nation,  without  the  least  hint  that  there  was  any 
missionary  business  impelling  him  to  make  the  ride,  and  no 
one  of  them  ever,  to  the  day  of  his  death,  in  any  of  his  "state- 
ments" and  newspaper  articles  in  defense  of  the  saving  Oregon 
story,  ever  admitted  knowing  anything  about  the  order  of  the 
Board  discontinuing  three  out  of  the  four  stations  of  the  mis- 
sion, including  Spalding's  and  Whitman's,  and  recalling  to 
the  States  Spalding  and  Gray  (i.  e.,  two  out  of  the  five  men 
connected  with  the  mission),  or  about  recollecting  that  that 


HOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES.        41 

order  was  even  mentioned  at  the  special  meeting  of  the  mis- 
sion, held  September  26-27,  1842,  though  the  official  record  of 
that  meeting  (which  they  all  refrain  from  quoting),  shows  that 
it  discussed  nothing  but  that  order,  and  Gray's  sudden  (and,  as 
Eells  and  Walker  both  declared)  dishonorable  desertion  of  the 
mission.  Dr.  Mowry,  knowing  that  this  claim  that  the  sole 
purpose  of  Whitman's  ride  was  to  save  Oregon  is  false,  in  all 
his  extensive  quotations  from  Gray,  Spalding  and  C.  Eells, 
carefully  refrains  from  even  mentioning  that  they  had  ever 
made  any  such  claim. 

Furthermore,  except  Spalding's  signature  to  the  resolve  of 
September  28,  1842,  Spalding  and  Gray  wrote  nothing  con- 
temporaneously (so  far  as  has  ever  yet  appeared)  as  to  the 
origin  and  purpose  of  Whitman's  ride,  but  when,  in  1865-6, 
they  published  their  version  of  the  Saving  Oregon  theory  of 
that  ride,  they  agreed  in  ascribing  it  to  a  taunt  at  a  crowded 
dinner  table  at  Fort  Walla  Walla  a  few  days  before  he  started 
on  Ooctober  3,  1842,  anent  the  announcement  that  the  Red 
River  emigrants  would  soon  arrive  to  settle  Oregon  and  secure 
it  for  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  and  to  the  end  of  their  lives 
(Spalding  died  in  1874,  and  Gray  in  1889),  they  both  insisted 
that  that  was  the  true  account  of  the  origin  of  Whitman's  ride. 
But  it  having  been  proved  beyond  any  possibility  of  dispute 
that  the  whole  Walla  Walla  dinner  story  is  pure  fiction,  be- 
cause the  Red  River  settlers  came  in  1841,  as  stated,  not  only 
in  Spalding's  diary  for  September  10,  1841,  and  in  E.  Walker's 
diary  for  September  21,  1841,  but  also  in  Dr.  Whitman's  letter 
of  November  11,  1841,  in  which,  out  of  about  6,000  words  in 
the  letter,  Whitman  devotes  the  whole  of  thirty  words  to  the 
bare  announcement  of  their  arrival  (in  connection  with  other 
matters  of  much  more  personal  concern  to  himself),  and  to 
show  how  unimportant  in  his  mind  was  their  coming,  puts 
those  thirty  words  in  a  parenthesis,  as  follows:  "(A  large 
party  of  settlers  as  half  servants  to  the  company,  were  at  that 
time"  (i.  e.,  October  4,  1841,)  "at  the  fort,""  (i.  e.,  Walla 
Walla),  "on  their  way  from  the  Red  River  to  settle  on  the 
Cowlitz.)"  Dr.  Mowry,  by  not  only  not  even  mentioning  it, 
but  by  substituting  for  it  Rev.  C.  Eells'  entirely  different  and 
totally  contradictory  account,  totally  repudiates  Gray's  and 
Spalding's  account  of  the  origin  of  that  ride,  which  was  the 
only  thing  about  it  that  was  a  matter  within  their  own  per- 
sonal experience,  and  concerning  which,  therefore,  their 
recollections,  if  correct,  might  have  had  some  evi- 
dential value,  but  he  quotes  extensively  and  endorses 
as  correct  the  "recollections"  of  Spalding  and  Gray  as 
to  what  took  place  between  Whitman  and  Tyler  and 
Webster.  That  is,  totally  repudiating  as  wholly  untrue, 
all  that  Gray  and   Spalding   constantly  declared   as   long  as 


42        MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES. 

they  lived  was  the  true  account  of  all  about  Whitman's  ride 
that  came  within  their  own  personal  observation  and  experi- 
ence, to  wit.,  its  origin,  our  author  imposes  on  the  credulity 
of  his  readers  what  these  same  men  "recollected,"  from 
twenty-three  to  forty  years  after  the  event,  about  what  they 
thought  Whitman  told  them  took  place  more  than  3,000  miles 
away  from  them,  and  concerning  which,  as  they  have  never 
been  able  to  produce  so  much  as  one  short  sentence  in  any  con- 
temporary book,  magazine,  newspaper,  government  document, 
diary  or  letter,  that  supports  their  "recollections,"  it  is  certain 
that  they  knew  nothing  except  from  hearsay,  or  a  lively  imag- 
ination. But  that  is  not  the  end  of  Dr.  Mowry's  offense  in 
these  quotations  from  Gray  and  Spalding,  for  both  of  them 
"recollected"  as  clearly  as  they  did  anything  else  of  what  they 
claimed  took  place  in  Washington,  that  Whitman  succeeded  in 
preventing  the  trading  off  of  Oregon  in  the  Ashburton  treaty, 
"for  a  codfishery  on  Newfoundland/'  (Cf.,  Lecture  by  Rev. 
H.  H.  Spalding,  quoted  in  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  37,  41st  Cong.,  3d 
session;  also  W.  H.  Gray's  Hist,  of  Or.,  pp.  290,  316.)  That, 
however,  having  been  proved  by  the  date  of  the  signing  of  the 
Ashburton  treaty  to  have  been  as  destitute  of  truth  as  their 
account  of  the  origin  of  Whitman's  ride,  Dr.  Mowry  from 
his  quotations  from  Gray  and  Spalding  carefully  omits  what 
they  "recollected"  about  the  Ashburton  treaty,  though  as  late 
as  1870  and  1871  they  both  "recollected"  the  Ashburton  treaty 
as  certainly  as  anything  else  either  "recollected" — or  imagined 
— about  Whitman's  ride. 

Perrin  B.  Whitman,  the  nephew,  thirteen  years  old,  whom 
Dr.  Whitman  took  back  with  him  in  1843,  on  February  10, 
1882,  wrote  a  letter  from  Lapwai  Indian  Agency,  Idaho,  to 
Rev.  M.  Eells  (which  is  to  be  found  on  pages  12  and  13  of 
Mr.  Eells'  pamphlet,  "Marcus  Whitman,  M.  D.  Proofs  of 
His  Work  in  Saving  Oregon  to  the  United  States  and  in  Pro- 
moting the  Immigration  of  1843."    Portland,  Ore.,  1883). 

In  it  Perrin  Whitman  wrote,  "I  heard  him"  (i.  e.,  Dr.  Whit- 
man) "say  repeatedly  on  the  journey,  and  after  we  reached  his 
mission,  Wailatpu,  that  he  went  to  the  States  in  the  winter 
of  1842  and  1843  for  the  sole  purpose  of  bringing  an  immigra- 
tion with  wagons  across  the  plains  to  Oregon." 

This  Dr.  Mowry  quotes  (on  p.  137),  but  omits  the  word 
"sole."  It  would  be  interesting,  if  space  permitted,  to  ex- 
amine the  multitude  of  geographical  and  historical  errors  in 
this  book  not  herein  touched  upon. 

Suffice  it  to  say  that  some  of  them  are  extremely  laughable 
and  others  saddening  as  illustrations  of  the  old  adage,  "How 
desperate  are  the  shifts  of  a  confirmed  -theorist,"  but  as  Dr. 
Mowry  has  written  all  the  rest  of  the  book  on  the  same  lines 
as  the  parts  herein  criticized,  after  this  examination   of  his 


MOWRY'S  TREATMENT  OF  ORIGINAL  SOURCES.        43 

treatment  of  every  important  original  source,  it  seems  un- 
necessary to  further  notice  his  treatment  of  minor  "original 
sources"  or  his  numerous  errors  in  other  matters. 

Dr.  Mowry  asserts  that  his  "Marcus  Whitman"  is  a  "his- 
tory," and  that  "from  first  to  last  it  deals  with  facts,"  and  very 
positively  denies  that  it  is  "an  embellished  story." 

Just  how  he  "deals  with  facts"  is  plainly  shown  herein,  and 
one  cannot  help  wondering  what  sort  of  a  book  he  would  have 
produced  if  he  had  exercised  his  intellect  in  the  production  of 
an  "embellished  story"  instead  of  "history." 

It  is  said  that  a  friend  whom  he  did  not  wish  to  disoblige 
having  persistently  importuned  President  Lincoln  to  write  a 
notice  of  a  book,  which  he  could  not  conscientiously  commend, 
Lincoln  at  last  penned  the  following: 

"Having  read  Dr.  Blank's  book,  I  am  free  to  say  that,  for 
people  who  like  this  kind  of  a  book,  this  seems  to  me  an  ex- 
cellent sample  of  the  kind  of  a  book  they  like." 

So,  for  those  who  think  the  proper  course  for  a  historical 
writer  to  pursue  with  all  "original  sources"  that  cannot  be 
twisted  so  as  to  support  his  preconceived  theories,  is  to  either 
ignore  or  deliberately  suppress  or  misquote  them,  or  to  sub- 
stitute for  them  the  contradictory  and  demonstrably  false 
"recollections"  of  their  authors  written  30  to  40  years  later, 
Dr.  Mowry's  "Marcus  Whitman"  may  be  recommended  as  a 
very  finely  executed  specimen  of  the  kind  of  writing  they  ar^ 
willing  to  accept  as  historical 


WHY  HIS  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  THE  TRUTH  OF  HIS- 
TORY WAS  A  FAILURE. 


Being  a  Review  of  Rev.  Myron  Eells'  "Reply  to  Professor 
Bourne."    By  Principal  Wm.  I.  Marshall  of  Chicago. 


(Copyright,  1903,  by  Wm.  I.  Marshall.) 


All  rights  reserved. 


To  examine  critically  Rev.  M.  Eells'  "Reply  to  Professor 
Bourne's  The  Legend  of  Marcus  Whitman/  "  is  very  difficult, 
because  Mr.  Eells'  methods  are  so  unlike  those  of  careful  his- 
torians that  one  accustomed  to  reading  books  whose  authors 
summarize  fairly,  and  quote  honestly  and  accurately  the  au- 
thorities to  which  they  refer,  and  never  suppress  all  mention 
of  authorities  which  they  cannot  twist  to  support  their  own 
preconceived  theories,  is  continually  bewildered  in  reading  this 
"Reply,"  and  in  doubt  whether  what  he  encounters  on  almost 
every  page  is  evidence  of  incapacity  or  dishonesty. 

MR.    EELLS'    NATURAL    LIMITATIONS. 

The  circumstances  of  Mr.  Eells'  life  make  it  impossible  to 
hold  him  to  a  very  high  standard  of  performance  in  many  re- 
spects. Born  on  the  extremest  frontier  in  a  log  cabin,  and 
living  nearly  all  his  life  on  the  frontier,  (mostly  around  Indian 
agencies,  which  are  not  generally  believed  to  be  places  specially 
stimulating  to  careful  research,  accurate  statements  or  candor 
in  discussion),  he  has  had  little  opportunity  to  work  in  any 
library  of  even  moderate  size,  and,  totally  lacking  scientific 
training,  he  seems  entirely  destitute  of  any  comprehension  of 
the  use  of  scientific  methods  in  historical  research,  and  of  what 
constitutes  valid  evidence.  Naturally,  also,  as  a  son  of  Rev. 
C.    Eells,    one    of   the   originators    of   the    "Whitman    Saved 


46  REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  {?)  FOR  TRUTH. 

Oregon"  story,  he  has  the  strongest  kind  of  personal  and  fam- 
ily interest  in  finding  some  method  of  making  that  story  appear 
to  be  true. 

But  when  all  allowances  have  been  made  for  these  matters, 
and  also  for  his  apparently  total  lack  of  any  sense  of  humor,  the 
public  had  a  right  to  demand  of  him  either  that  he  should  not 
have  written  at  all,  or  that  he  should  have  produced  a  much 
more  creditable  book  than  he  has,  since  all  these  deficiencies 
cannot  justify  the  deliberate  concealment  or  misquotation  of 
such  authorities  as  are  perfectly  well  known  to  the  author. 

HIS  ONE  GREAT  ADVANTAGE — WHICH  HE  CAREFULLY  REFRAINED 
FROM    USING. 

It  must  also  be  remembered  that  with  all  these  deficiencies 
he  has  one  qualification  that  should  have  enabled  him  speedily 
to  get  at  the  whole  truth  about  Marcus  Whitman,  and  that  is, 
that  as  a  son  of  Rev.  C.  Eells,  he  could  have  freest  access  to  all 
the  correspondence  of  Whitman  and  all  his  associates  with  the 
American  Board  of  Commissioners  of  Foreign  Missions,  and 
also  more  easily  than  any  one  else  could  get  access  to  their  cor- 
respondence with  relations  and  friends,  and  their  journals.  He 
makes  great  claims  to  fairness  and  moderation  and  candor  and 
desire  to  have  the  truth  appear,  declaring  (p.  37),  "The  writer 
has  no  objection  to  scientific  history  as  above  defined,  namely, 
the  facts  written  at  or  near  the  time  they  occurred.  He  has 
tried  to  obtain  all  such  scientific  history  that  he  could  for  all 
his  writings.  He  has  searched  old  books,  pamphlets  and  let- 
ters for  it.  He  thinks  highly  of  it,  and  more  highly  of  only  one 
thing,  and  that  is  the  truth.  This  he  places  above  everything," 
and  (p.  43)  "The  writer  believes  in  trying  to  find  the  truth  of 
history,  wherever  it  can  be  found." 

HIS  STRANGE  NOTIONS  OF  CANDOR  AND  FAIRNESS  SHOWN  IN  HIS 
TREATMENT  OF  PROFESSOR  JOHN  FISKE's  COMMENDA- 
TORY LETTER  TO   ME. 

Let  us  see  how  his  "Reply"  compares  with  this  alleged  can- 
dor and  fairness  and  desire  to  discover  and  state  the  truth 
"wherever  found."  As  the  "Reply"  is  partly  aimed  at  my  dis- 
cussion of  Professor  Bourne's  paper  at  the  1900  meeting  of 
the  American  Historical  Association,  I  will  first  examine  his 
treatment  of  that  discussion,  as  printed  in  Transactions  Ameri- 
can Historical  Association  for  1900,  pages  219-236  (and  here- 
with reprinted),  of  which  he  had  a  copy  with  my  compliments. 
On  pages  20-22  he  takes  up  the  account  of  my  work  in  driving 
the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story,  (and  all  the  misrepresenta- 
tions about  Oregon  history  which  are  necessary  postulates  of 
that  story)   out  of  school  histories,  and  says  that  it  was  done 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH.  47 

"secretly/'  and  "was  a  stab  in  the  dark/'  and  that  I  "was  afraid 
to  meet  my  opponents"  (f.  e.,  the  advocates  of  the  Whitman 
Saved  Oregon  story)  "in  argument,"  and  that  I  knew  that  my 
side  "had  been  worsted  in  the  discussion  on  the  Pacific  coast." 
Nothing  farther  from  the  truth  than  these  statements  are  can 
be  imagined.  I  well  knew  that  notwithstanding  the  careful 
suppression  of  all  the  conclusive  contemporaneous  correspond- 
ence and  diaries  of  Whitman  and  his  associates,  which  were  in 
possession  of  the  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon 
story,  and  notwithstanding  its  opponents  were  heavily  handi- 
capped by  their  inability  to  obtain  access,  in  the  States  of 
Oregon  and  Washington,  to  many  of  the  most  important  gov- 
ernment documents  bearing  on  the  case,  the  weight  of  argu- 
ment was  so  vastly  against  the  Saving  Oregon  theory  of  Whit- 
man's ride  that  no  candid  and  fairly  well-informed  historian 
who  will  sit  down  and  read  that  discussion  as  it  appeared  from 
1879  to  1885,  in  the  columns  of  the  Portland  Oregonian,  the 
Seattle  Post  Intelligencer  and  the  Tacoma  Ledger,  and  in 
pamphlets  which  were  mainly  reprints  of  tt(e  nswjpaper  arti- 
cles, will,  when  he  has  finished  them,  have  any  confidence  in 
any  version  of  the  Saving  Oregon  theory  of  that  winter's  ride. 
But  I  also  well  knew  that  scarcely  an  echo  of  that  discussion 
was  heard  east  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  except  among  the 
very  devoted  adherents  of  the  American  Board  of  Foreign 
Missions,  and  the  Presbyterian  Missionary  Board,  very  few  of 
whom  read  any  of  the  arguments  and  evidence  against  the 
Saving  Oregon  theory,  but  only  the  specious  and  sophistical 
defence  of  it  by  Rev.  Thomas  Laurie,  D.  D.,  (the  official  his- 
torian of  the  American  Board),  in  the  Missionary  Herald,  for 
February  and  September,  1885. 

MY  OFFER  TO  W.    A.    MOWRY  TO  REST  THE   CASE  ON  THE   CORRE- 
SPONDENCE   OF    WHITMAN    AND    HIS    ASSOCIATES    IF    HE 
WOULD  INDUCE  THE  A.    B.   C   F.    M.    TO  PRINT  IT. 

As  to  the  charge  that  I  was  afraid  to  meet  the  advocates  of 
the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story  in  argument,  it  only  needs 
to  be. said  that  nearly  six  years  ago  I  proposed  to  Dr.  W.  A. 
Mowry,  that  if  he  would  induce  the  American  Board  to  print 
every  letter  in  its  archives  from  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Whitman,  to- 
gether with  such  other  letters  as  I  should  name  from  the  corre- 
spondence of  the  other  members  of  the  Oregon  Mission,  viz. : 
Rev.  C.  Eells,  Rev.  H.  H.  Spalding,  Rev.  Elkanah  Walker, 
Rev.  A.  B.  Smith,  Mr.  W.  H.  Gray  and  Mr.  Cornelius  Rogers, 
together  with  such  letters  as  I  should  select  from  the  published 
correspondence  of  the  above  parties,  and  such  as  I  should 
select  from  the  correspondence  of  Rev.  G.  H.  Atkinson  with 
the  American  Board,  so  that  the  world  might  have  a  chance 


48  REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (/)  FOR  TRUTH. 

to  judge  exactly  what  the  facts  are  about  the  founding  and 
continuance  and  termination  of  the  Whitman-Spalding-Eells 
Mission,  and  the  origin  and  purpose  of  Whitman's  ride,  I 
would  contribute  $500  (which  would  be  fully  one-half  of  the 
necessary  expense  of  it)  towards  the  cost  of  the  publication, 
and  would  rest  the  question  of  the  origin,  purposes  and  results 
of  Whitman's  ride  entirely  on  those  letters  and  on  the  reports 
of  the  action  of  the  Prudential  Committee  of  the  Board  thereon 
as  shown  by  its  official  records,  and  by  the  letters  which  its 
Secretary  sent  in  reply  to  them.  My  only  conditions  were  that 
they  should  print  the  full  text  of  those  letters,  and  the  replies 
to  them,  and  the  action  of  the  Prudential  Committee  on  them, 
with  correct  copies  of  the  memoranda  showing  the  date  of  re- 
ceipt of  each  letter,  and  that  they  should  print  and  put  on  sale 
at  least  2,500  copies  and  furnish  me  free  of  cost  250  copies. 
While  I  only  stipulated  for  the  publication  of  such  letters  as  I 
should  select,  I  distinctly  stated  that  it  was  only  because  of  the 
great  volume  of  other  letters  which  related  merely  to  routine 
missionary  business,  and  do  not  possess  the  least  value  for  the 
purposes  of  the  general  historian,  casting  no  light  whatever  on 
any  controverted  points,  but  I  also  added,  that  if  the  American 
Board  thought  the  publication  of  this  inconsequential  corre- 
spondence would  be  of  any  benefit,  I  should  not  object,  and  if 
they  would  only  furnish  to  the  public  an  accurate  copy  of  the 
text  of  the  letters  and  records  I  asked  them  to  print,  I  did  not 
care  how  much  more  they  printed,  nor  how  many  notes  and 
explanations  they  might  print  in  an  appendix  or  as  footnotes. 
To  this  letter  I  never  received  any  reply.  That  offer  still  holds 
good,  but  there  is  no  probability  that  it  will  ever  be  accepted. 

MYSELF    IMPOSED   ON   BY    THE    WHITMAN    SAVED   OREGON    STORY 
FROM    1877  TO   l882. 

It  is  now  more  than  twrenty-seven  years  since  I  began  the 
study  of  the  acquisition  of  the  Oregon  Territory,  and  for  five 
years  I  was  imposed  upon  by  the  Saving  Oregon  theory  of 
Whitman's  ride,  as  told  by  Gray,  and  Spalding,  and  Rev.  C. 
Eells.  Twenty-two  years  ago  I  found  that  story  to  be  fictitious, 
and  since  that  have  never  faltered  in  my  determination  to  pub- 
lish the  truth  about  it,  as  soon  as  I  should  find  myself  able  to 
do  so.  Compelled  to  work  steadily  at  my  profession  as  a 
teacher  to  support  my  family,  and  caught  and  nearly  ruined  in 
the  panic  of  1893,  I  have  not  yet  found  myself  able  to  publish 
the  indisputable  evidence  which  I  have  been  so  long  and  care- 
fully collecting.  Finding  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story, 
with  all  its  astonishing  perversions  of  the  real  history  of  the 
longest,  most  interesting,  most  successful  and  most  remarkable 
diplomatic  struggle  we  have  ever  made  for  territory  was  being 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH.  49 

imposed  upon  the  children  of  the  nation  through  their  school 
histories,  I  decided  six  years  ago,  that  though  I  could  not 
afford  to  publish  a  book,  I  could  (as  my  daughter  was  my  tpye- 
writer)  afford  to  send  typewritten  criticisms  of  the  amazing 
errors  into  which  some  of  the  ablest  of  our  historians  had  fallen 
through  accepting  Gray,  and  Spalding,  and  C.  Eells,  and  Bar- 
rows, and  Nixon,  and  Mowry,  and  Coffin,  and  Craighead,  and 
M.  Eells  as  trustworthy  authorities,  instead  of  going  to  original 
sources,  as  I  had  done  in  all  cases.  These  manuscripts  have 
been  read  by  some  three-score  historians  and  historical  students, 
including  Professors  of  History  in  Universities  and  Colleges, 
Teachers  of  History  in  Normal,  and  High,  and  Elementary 
Schools,  Judges,  Clergymen,  Editors  and  Librarians,  and  ex- 
cept W.  A.  Mowry,  every  person — man  or  woman — who  has 
read  even  one-quarter  part  of  them  has  been  convinced  that 
they  completely  overthrow  each  and  every  form  of  the  Whitman 
Saved  Oregon  story;  and  nearly  all  of  these  persons  had  been 
believers  in  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story,  and  many  of 
them  had  put  it  in  their  books  or  otherwise  publicly  advocated 
it.  Dr.  Mowry  was  not  convinced,  not,  as  Mr.  Eells  says,  "Be- 
~cause  he  had  studied  both  sides  of  the  subject;"  but  it  is  because 
his  "study  of  the  subject"  has  been  controlled  by  those  unique 
ideas  of  the  limits  of  historical  investigation  and  publication, 
stated  in  his  letter  of  December  9,  1898  (Cf.  p.  9  ante  for  this), 
that  he  still  asserts  that  "Whitman  Saved  Oregon."  To  all  the 
professional  historians,  and  also  the  compilers  of  school  his- 
tories, to  whom  I  sent  my  manuscripts,  I  wrote  urging  each  to 
subject  my  statements  to  the  most  rigorous  examination,  to 
verify  for  themselves  the  fairness  of  any  or  all  summaries,  and 
the  accuracy  of  any  or  all  quotations,  and  to  have  the  kindness 
to  inform  me  if  they  found  any  erroneous  statement  of  fact,  or 
inaccuracy  in  quotation  or  unfairness  in  summarizing  such 
documents  as  I  could  not  find  space  to  quote  in  full,  believing 
that  any  one  who  points  out  an  error  I  have  made  does  me  a 
kindness,  by  enabling  me  to  be  wiser  hereafter  than  I  have  been 
heretofore.  To  help  them  to  arrive  at  the  exact  facts  about  the 
arguments  advanced  by  the  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Saved 
Oregon  story,  I  sent  several  of  them  for  examination  a  copy  of 
Rev.  M.  Eells'  pamphlet,  "Marcus  Whitman,  M.  D.,  Proofs  of 
His  Work  in  Saving  Oregon  to  the  United  States,  etc."  Port- 
land, 1883,  and  also  a  copy  of  the  "Whitman  Controversy," 
Portland,  1885,  and  only  regretted  that  I  had  not  copies  enough 
of  both  to  have  sent  a  copy  o'f  each  with  each  set  of  my  MSS. 
No  one  of  those  who  read  my  MSS.  found  a  single  error  of 
fact,  or  a  single  inaccurate  quotation,  or  a  single  unfair  sum- 
mary. Among  those  who  having  heard  of  my  MSS.  asked  the 
privilege  of  reading  them  was  the  late  Professor  John  Fiske, 
and  when  through  with  them  he  wrote  me  a  letter  which  the 


50  REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH. 

reader  will  find  printed  verbatim  in  the  reprint  from  the  Trans- 
actions of  the  American  Historical  Association  for  1900,  here- 
with, pages  229-30. 

Having  before  him  in  my  pamphlet  reprint  from  Transac- 
tions of  the  American  Historical  Association,  1900,  this  letter 
of  Dr.  Fiske,  as  well  as  letters  from  Dr.  Edward  Eggleston, 
Professor  John  B.  McMaster  and  several  other  historians,  en- 
dorsing the  correctness  of  my  conclusions,  and  well  knowing 
that  very  few  of  his  readers  would  ever  have  a  chance  to  know 
anything  about  these  letters  except  what  he  might  choose  to 
state  in  his  "Reply,"  how  does  our  candid  author,  seeking  for 
the  "truth  of  history  wherever  found"  treat  this  matter?  He 
nowhere  gives  his  readers  any  intimation  that  anybody  had 
changed  his  opinions  about  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story 
as  the  result  of  my  labors,  nor  that  any  historian  except  Pro- 
fessor Fiske  had  written  any  kind  of  a  letter  to  me  about  my 
MSS.,  and,  quoting  from  my  discussion  in  December,  1900,  of 
Professor  Bourne's  paper,  seven  phrases,  aggregating  thirty- 
six  words,  entirely  disconnected  from  their  contexts,  he  says 
(p.  7)  :  "Was  it  strange  that  Professor  Fiske  wrote  him,  T 
think  the  force  of  your  arguments  would  be  enhanced  if  your 
style  of  expression  were  now  and  then  a  little  less  vehe- 
ment ?'  "  Concerning  this,  it  only  need  be  said  that  Professor 
Fiske's  kindly  criticism,  not  of  any  errors  of  fact  or  of  quota- 
tion, but  only  of  my  style  of  expression,  had  no  reference  to 
anything  in  the  pamphlet  to  which  Mr.  Eells  refers,  (and  from 
which  he  picks  out  thirty-six  words  only,  and  dares  not  quote 
any  sentence  in  which  they  exist) ,  because  Professor  Fiske  was 
not  present  to  hear  that  discussion  at  Detroit,  and  was  dead 
before  the  volume  of  Tranactions  for  that  year  was  printed,  so 
that  he  never  either  heard  or  read  one  sentence  of  this  to  which 
our  candid  (?)  author  applies  Professor  Fiske's  criticism,  nor 
is  there  the  least  reason  to  suppose  that  Professor  Fiske  would 
have  criticised  my  style  in  that  discussion  as  too  vehement,  since 
it  was  entirely  acceptable  to  the  Publication  Committee  of  the 
American  Historical  Association,  without  whose  approval  it 
could  not  have  been  printed  in  the  Transactions. 

I  wrote  Professor  Fiske  immediately  on  receipt  of  his  letter, 
thanking  him  for  his  kindly  criticism,  but  explaining  to  him 
that  the  MSS.  sent  him  were  not  intended  for  publication 
without  careful  revision,  but  that  they  were  criticisms,  copies 
of  which  had  been  sent  directly  to  the  authors  of  the  school 
histories  criticised,  and  that  I  had  made  some  of  them  ex- 
tremely sarcastic,  because  the  parties  criticised  had  been  ex- 
ceedingly discourteous  to  me  when,  some  years  before,  I  had 
written  them  very  courteous  letters  warning  them  (some  of 
them  before  their  books  were  published)  of  the  wholly  fictitious 
nature  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story,  and  imploring 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH.  51 

them  to  investigate  the  original  sources  before  imposing  such 
a  fiction  on  the  school  children  of  the  country  as  history,  and 
assuring  them  that,  if  they  put  it  in,  they  would  speedily  be 
obliged  to  cut  it  out,  as  its  falsity  would  be  proved  beyond  any 
question,  and  offering  to  put  before  them  without  charge  (in 
confidence,  for  their  own  use  only,)  all  the  evidence  in  my 
possession,  (which  had  cost  me  $10,000  in  money  and  time  to 
collect,)  to  enable  them  to  arrive  at  the  truth  about  the  matter. 

On  page  8  our  candid  author  says  "He"  (i.  e.,  M.  Eells) 
"prefers  to  follow  the  advice  of  Professor  Fiske  to  Professor 
Marshall,  'It  seems  to  me  that  there  is  great  value  in  a  quiet 
form  of  statement,  even  approaching  to  an  understatement,  for 
it  gives  the  reader  a  chance  to  do  a  little  swearing  at  the  enemy 
on  his  own  account.'  " 

Had  Mr.  Eells  either  printed  the  whole  of  Dr.  Fiske's  letter, 
or  had  said,  "Was  it  strange  that  in  a  letter  heartily  endorsing 
the  correctness  of  Mr.  Marshall's  conclusions  Dr.  Fiske  also 
wrote  him,  'I  think  the  force  of  your  arguments,'  etc.,  he  might 
have  commented  as  much  as  he  pleased  on  these  two  sentences 
in  it,  and  I  would  not  have  cared  to  waste  one  moment  in  notic- 
ing his  comments.  But  from  a  letter  more  warmly  commenda- 
tory of  the  value  and  the  thoroughness  of  my  work  on  the  his- 
tory of  Oregon  than  I  would  have  written  myself,  had  Dr. 
Fiske  told  me  to  write  anything  I  pleased  and  he  would  sign  it, 
to  take  out  these  fragments  of  two  sentences  of  kindly  criticism, 
not  of  the  correctness  of  my  statements,  but  of  their  style,  and 
to  apply  them  to  an  article  which  Dr.  Fiske  never  saw,  and  so 
convey  to  all  the  readers  of  this  "Reply"  the  impression  that 
Dr.  Fiske's  letter  was  condemnatory  instead  of  very  warmly 
commendatory  of  my  work,  illustrates  the  idea  of  "candor" 
and  "fairness"  which  has  animated  not  Mr.  Eells  alone,  but 
every  one  else  who  has  published  a  book  advocating  the  Whit- 
man Saved  Oregon  story ;  which  is  my  only  reason  for  this  full 
exposition  of  the  matter. 

HIS    CANDOR    (  ?)     IN    THE    MATTER    OF    REV.    H.    H.    SPALDING'S 

DIARY. 

Another  excellent  illustration  of  his  idea  of  "candor"  is  in 
his  treatment  of  the  diary  of  Rev.  H.  H.  Spalding.  From  this 
diary,  which  has  been  in  Rev.  M.  Eells'  possession  for  many 
years,  he  has  only  published  sixty-one  words  (on  p.  18  of  his 
pamphlet,  Marcus  Whitman,  M.  D.),  and  those  sixty-one  words 
not  till  1883,  i.  e.,  eighteen  years  after  the  Whitman  Saved 
Oregon  story  was  first  published  in  full  by  Spalding.  Having 
repeatedly  called  on  the  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Saved 
Oregon  story,  and  particularly  Rev.  M.  Eells,  to  make  this 
diary  accessible  to  historical  students,  on  January  13,  1902,  I 


52  REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH. 

wrote  to  Rev.  M.  Eells  asking  him  to  either  print  that  diary 
or  turn  it  over,  unmutilated,  to  the  Oregon  Historical  Society. 
To  that  letter  I  received  no  answer,  but  on  pages  19  and  20  of 
this  "Reply,"  after  quoting  that  request  from  me,  he  says  that 
some  years  since  he  did  "Copy  by  hand  and  turn  over  to  Pro- 
fessor F.  G.  Young,  Secretary  of  the  Oregon  Historical  So- 
ciety" (not  that  diary  unmutilated,  but)  "all  that  was  of  public 
interest  in  this  diary" — he  being  the  only  judge  of  what  was  of 
public  interest^-and  that  "The  diary  does  not  include  the  time 
under  discussion,"  but  covers  and  "Is  quite  full  from  Novem- 
ber, 1838,  to  April  22,  1842,"  and  has  a  page  and  a  half  cover- 
ing "February  21  to  March  7,  1843,"  and  tnen  sa.Ys>  "The 
reader  can  judge  from  this  on  what  little  evidence  and  knowl- 
edge the  professor  (i.  e.,  myself)  bases  some  of  his  statements." 
What  I  had  claimed  was,  that  "That  diary  must  contain  a  good 
deal  of  matter  that  would  be  very  important  in  the  discussion 
of  the  Whitman  question."  Our  candid  author  seeks  first  to 
hedge  by  claiming  that  "it  does  not  cover  the  time  under  dis- 
cussion (that  is  September,  1842,  to  October,  1843),  as  H  >t 
would  be  possible  to  properly  discuss  the  Whitman  question 
without  covering  the  whole  time  that  the  Whitman^Spalding 
Mission  existed,  i.  e.,  1836  to  1848,  but  he  is  careful  not  to 
quote  another  word  out  of  the  something  more  than  25,000  in 
the  diary,  except  the  sixty-one  before  mentioned. 

Determined  to  know  what  was  in  this  so  carefully  concealed 
original  source  of  Oregon  history,  in  July,  1902,  I  went 
from  Chicago  to  Portland,  Ore.,  mainly  to  see  this 
part  of  it  which  M.  Eells  claims  to  have  turned  over 
to  the  Oregon  Historical  Society,  and  if  that  should 
not  seem  to  me  a  proper  selection  from  it,  to  go  to 
Mr.  Eells'  home  and  ask  to  see  the  diary  itself.  Finding 
that  the  Assistant  Secretary  and  Librarian  of  the  Oregon  His- 
torical society  in  Portland  knew  nothing  of  any  extracts  from 
Spalding's  Diary  having  ever  been  given  into  the  custody  of 
the  Society,  I  went  to  Skokomish,  and  at  Mr.  Eells'  house  ex- 
amined and  copied  some  11,000  words  from  it,  and  found  in  it, 
exactly  as  I  expected,  a  great  deal  of  matter  which  is  of  much 
importance  to  a  thorough  understanding  of  the  Whitman 
Saved  Oregon  question,  but  not  a  single  word  in  it  which  fur- 
nishes the  least  support  to  any  version  of  the  Saving  Oregon 
theory  of  Whitman's  ride,  or  to  any  claim  of  great  patriotism,  or 
farsightedness,  or  intellectual  or  moral  greatness  in  Marcus 
Whitman's  character  or  achievements.  As  it  is  evident  that 
no  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story  will  ever 
have  any  desire  to  publish  any  considerable  part  of  this  diary, 
any  more  than  to  publish  the  correspondence  of  the  Oregon  Mis- 
sion with  the  American  Board,  it  appears  likely  that  the  public 
will  have  to  wait  for  several  pages  of  it  in  my  forthcoming  book 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH.  53 

on  "The  Acquisition  of  Oregon  and  the  Long-Suppressed  Evi- 
dence About  Marcus  Whitman,"  in  which  I  shall  try 
to  publish  some  150  to  200  pages  of  this  evidence  which  has 
been  so  carefully  concealed  hitherto,  except  as  my  MSS.  and 
later  Professor  Bourne's  ''Legend  of  Marcus  Whitman"  have 
made  a  little  of  it  known. 

REV.   DR.    EELLS'    HAZY   NOTIONS   OF   "SCIENTIFIC"   AND   "TRUTH- 
FUL."   HISTORY. 

Pages  35  to  44  of  Mr.  Eells'  "Reply"  contain  a  very  foggy 
discussion  of  "scientific  history"  vs.  "true  history,"  exhibiting 
his  total  lack  alike  of  the  scientific  spirit  and  of  logic  and  of 
the  laws  of  evidence  and  of  any  sense  of  humor.  On  page  37 
he  triumphantly  asks,  "In  fact,  can  Professor  Bourne  tell  what 
contemporary  writer  recorded  the  history  of  Christ,  all  the 
gospels  having  been  written  many  years  after  Christ's  death  ?" 
Now,  in  spite  of  the  persistent  efforts  for  more  than  twenty 
years  past  of  the  authors  and  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Saved 
Oregon  story — and  especially  Rev.  M.  Eells — to  exalt  it  into  an 
additional  article  of  religious  and  patriotic  faith  by  seeking  to 
show  that  the  evidence  in  support  of  it  is  as  strong  as,  and  no 
more  contradictory  than,  that  offered  in  support  of  the  trust- 
worthiness of  the  New  Testament,  even  he  must  know  that 
there  is  not  the  remotest  parallelism  between  the  two  cases. 
Suppose  now  that  Matthew  and  Mark  and  Luke  and  John  had 
been  employed  by  some  great  society  during  the  public  life  of 
Christ,  and  for  some  years  after  his  death,  and  that  they  had  not 
only  written  several  hundred  letters  to  that  society,  but  also 
several  score  of  letters  to  relations  and  friends,  the  whole,  with 
fragments  of  their  diaries  aggregating  more  than  a  million 
words,  and  that  these  letters  to  the  society  were  now  found  to 
be  in  existence,  all  securely  bound  up  and  indexed,  and  also 
the  official  action  of  the  society  on  these  letters  and  the  replies 
to  them  of  its  Corresponding  Secretary,  were  found  to  be  in  ex- 
istence,  and  that  many  of  the  letters  to  their  friends,  togethei 
with  fragments  of  their  diaries  were  also  found  to  be  in  ex* 
istence,  and  that  there  were  also  found  to  be  in  existence  many 
contemporaneous  documents  of  the  Roman  Government  of  un- 
doubted authenticity,  and  that  in  all  this  vast  mass  of  con- 
temporaneous documents  of  the  authors  of  the  gospels  not  only 
was  there  not  a  single  sentence  found  expressing  the  slightest 
interest  in  or  concern  about  the  life  or  crucifixion  of  Jesus,  but 
also  in  the  government  documents  there  was  conclusive  evidence 
that  Jesus  was  not  crucified  at  all,  how  much  credence  does 
Mr.  Eells  suppose  would  be  given  to  the  gospels  "written  many 
years  after  the  event?"  And  what  confidence  would  anyone 
have  in  the  ability  as  a  historian  of  any  clergyman  (even  if,  as 


d 


54  REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH. 

in  the  case  of  Rev.  M.  Eells,  he  had  been  made  a  D.  D.  by 
Whitman  College),  who,  knowing  of  all  this  vast  mass  of  con- 
temporaneous evidence  of  undoubted  authenticity,  should  for 
years  suppress  all  mention  of  it,  and  ask  people  to  believe  in- 
stead of  it  "the  gospel  narrative  written  many  years  after  the 
event?"  This  is  precisely  the  case  with  the  Whitman  Saved 
Oregon  story.  The  correspondence  of  Whitman  and  his  as- 
sociates with  the  American  Board  and  with  friends  and  rela- 
tives, and  the  known  fragments  of  their  diaries  prior  to  Whit- 
man's starting  to  return  to  Oregon  in  April,  1843,  aggregate 
fully  600,000  words,  and  in  it  all  is  not  so  much  as  one  short 
sentence  expressing  the  slightest  interest  in  or  concern  about 
the  political  destiny  of  any  part  of  the  Oregon  Territory,  or  giv- 
ing the  least  support  in  any  way  to  any  version  of  a  patriotic 
origin  or  purpose  of  Whitman's  ride.  Yet  Mr.  Eells,  with  all 
his  pretensions  of  candor  and  desire  to  have  the  truth  about 
Whitman's  life  made  manifest,  in  the  sixty  thousand  or  more 
words  of  this  "Reply"  does  not  find  space  to  quote  so  much  as 
one  sentence  out  of  all  this  correspondence  and  these  diaries 
of  Whitman  and  his  associates  prior  to  his  return  to  Oregon. 
Of  letters  and  diaries  of  Whitman  and  his  associates  of  dates 
subsequent  to  April,  1843,  and  down  to  the  first  appearance  of 
the  first  vague  version  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story  in 
the  Sacramento  Union  of  November  16,  1864,  there  exist  fully 
450,000  to  500,000  words  more,  including  fully  26,000  to  28,000 
words  in  letters  to  the  Secretary  of  the  American  Board  from 
Dr.  Whitman  himself  of  dates  between  November,  1843,  an(l 
October  18,  1847. 

In  the  contemporaneous  Government  documents  there  is,  as 
we  have  already  seen  (pp.  23-35  ante)  the  most  indisputable  evi- 
dence that  there  was  no  danger  of  losing  Oregon  in  the  spring 
of  1843  and  that  Whitman  did  not  influence  the  policy  of 
Tyler's  Administration. 

We  have  already  shown  (pp.  20-21  ante)  how  the  expenses  of 
his  journey  and  his  frigid  reception  by  the  Secretary  of  the  Amer- 
ican Board,  in  Boston,  combined  with  the  steadily  and  rapidly 
increasing  decadence  of  the  Mission  subjected  Whitman  to  a 
great  temptation  to  magnify  the  importance  of  his  ride,  so  as 
to  convince  the  American  Board  that  in  some  way  such  good 
had  resulted  from  it  as  to  justify  its  expense,  and  the  resulting 
expense  in  continuing  the  Mission,  which,  but  for  that  ride, 
must  have  been  destroyed  in  1843,  or>  at  latest,  1844;  and  we 
have  also  seen  that  neither  Dr.  Whitman  nor  his  wife,  in  any 
letters  ever  written  by  them,  made  any  claim  that  he  had  com- 
municated any  information  to  President  Tyler,  or  Secretary 
Webster,  or  that  he  had  had  any  interviews  with  either  of 
them,  or  had  received  any  promises  of  assistance  from  them, 
or  from  any  other  Government  official,  or  that  he  had  found 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (f)  FOR  TRUTH.  55 

any  negotiations  pending  about  Oregon  which  were  to  be  in 
any  manner  affected  by  anything  he  had  done  or  might  do, 
or  that  he  had  published  in  newspapers — much  less  in  a 
pamphlet — any  information  about  Oregon  while  in  the  East, 
or  held  any  public  meetings  to  promote  migration  to  Oregon, 
and  that  in  but  one  letter,  that  of  April  i,  1847,  f°ur  ^d  one- 
half  years  after  he  started  for  the  States,  did  he  claim  that 
anything  else  but  missionary  business  induced  him  to  make  his 
ride. 

We  have  also  seen  how  Dr.  Mowry  copies  Rev.  Dr.  Thomas 
Laurie's  deceptive  quotation  from  that  letter  instead  of  going 
to  the  letter  itself,  and  (p.  22  ante)  I  have  for  the  first  time  given 
the  public  a  chance  to  read  exactly  what  claim  Whitman  did 
make  in  that  letter.  In  my  forthcoming  book  is  a  chapter  on 
"What  Dr.  Whitman  himself  claimed  about  his  services  to  the 
Government,"  in  which  every  sentence  in  which  he  makes  any 
claim  is  quoted  exactly  as  it  was  written,  and  compared  with 
the  unquestionable  facts,  so  that  the  public  can  judge  for  itself 
as  to  what  value  to  attach  to  his  own  claims,  as  well  as  to  the 
claims  made  for  him  by  Gray,  Spalding,  C.  Eells,  M.  Eells, 
Barrows,  Nixon,  Craighead,  Mowry,  et  al. 

As  soon  as  I  read,  in  February,  1887,  Rev.  Dr.  Laurie's 
garbled  quotation  from  Whitman's  letter  of  April  1,  1847,  in 
the  Missionary  Herald,  for  September,  1885,  it  seemed  to  me 
so  palpably  dishonest,  that  I  wrote  to  Dr.  Laurie  asking  him 
where  I  could  see  the  original  letter.  He  replied  that  he  pre- 
sumed I  could  see  it  at  the  American  Board  rooms  in  Boston, 
where  he  had. 

This  much  surprised  me,  for  ten  years  before,  in  answer  to 
my  thrice  repeated  inquiry  of  an  official  of  the  American  Board 
at  different  meetings  with  him,  I  had  been  assured  that  there 
were  no  letters  in  their  archives  which  showed  the  purpose  of 
Whitman's  ride.  I  applied  to  the  American  Board  for  permis- 
sion to  examine  the  correspondence  of  the  Oregon  Mission, 
and  on  permission  being  given  was  amazed  to  find  the  immense 
amount  hereinbefore  mentioned. 

■ 

JOINT  LETTERS  OF  REV  C.  EELLS  AND  REV.  E.  WALKER,  DATED  OCT. 

3,    1842,  FOR  WHICH  WHITMAN  DID  NOT  WAIT  AS  HE 

HAD  AGREED  TO  DO. 

Within  an  hour  I  had  found  not  only  this  letter  of  April  1, 
1847,  but  also  the  14-page  letter  written  by  C.  Eells,  and  en- 
dorsed by  E.  Walker  in  a  brief  note  as  correct,  which  contained 
the  official  report  of  the  Seventh  Annual  Meeting  of  the  Ore- 
gon Mission,  May  16-June  8,  1842,  and  also  the  report  of  the 
Special  Meeting  Sept.  26-27,  1842,  each  report  signed  E. 
Walker,  Moderator,  Cushing  Eells,  Scribe;  also  E.  Walker's 


56  REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (/)  FOR  TRUTH. 

1 6-page  letter  to  which  Gushing  Eells  had  appended  a  note, 
stating  that  the  subjects  of  the  letter  had  been  frequently  dis- 
cussed between  Mr.  Walker  and  himself,  and  its  general  plan 
mutually  agreed  upon,  and  that  having  heard  all  of  it  read  once 
and  parts  of  it  more  than  once,  ''I  have  observed  nothing  of 
importance  to  which  I  cannot  give  a  full  assent."  The  en- 
dorsement by  each  of  the  other's  letter  made  these  in  reality 
joint  letters.  Each  was  begun  Oct.  3,  1842,  and  Walker's  Jour- 
nal—  (perfectly  well  known  to  M.  Eells  for  at  least  18  years 
past) — states  that  his  letter  was  not  finished  till  October  8th, 
and  Mrs.  Whitman's  letter,  dated  Oct.  17,  1842,  (published  in 
Trans.  Or.  Pi.  Asscn.,  1891,  p.  167)  explicitly  declares  that 
the  letters  from  Messrs.  Eells  and  Walker  had  only  arrived 
that  day,  when  Dr.  Whitman  had  been  gone  two  weeks.  Rev. 
E.  Walker's  letter  to  D.  Greene,  Secretary,  dated  Feb.  28,  1843, 
complains  bitterly  that  though  they  had  sent  their  letters  at 
the  time  agreed  upon,  Dr.  Whitman  had  left  before  they  ar- 
rived at  Wailatpu,  and  so  had  gone  without  the  letters  from 
them  which  he  had  agreed  to  wait  for;  and  Walker's  Journal, 
under  date  of  Nov.  1,  1842,  reads  .  .  .  "We  were  writing 
when  the  Indians  came  up  with  letters.  We  learnt  that  Dr. 
W.  left  on  the  third  of  October  for  the  States,  without  any  let- 
ters from  us."  Yet  in  face  of  this  contemporaneous  evidence, 
all  perfectly  well  known  to  him,  Rev.  M.  Eells,  in  the  Ore- 
gonian,  of  Jan.  11,  1885,  declared  that  Rev.  C.  Eells  told  him 
that  "Their  courier  reached  Walla  Walla"  seasonably,  "before 
the  3d/'  while  in  this  "Reply,"  p.  68,  he  says,  "He  (*.  e.,  Whit- 
man) "left  his  station  October  3d,  when  the  fifth  was  the  day  he 
told  Messrs.  Walker  and  Eells  that  he  would  go.  Letters  were 
to  be  prepared  and  forwarded  accordingly.  They  reached  his 
station  Oct.  5th,  but  he  was  gone.  One  of  these  letters  is  now 
in  the  possession  of  the  writer.  It  is  a  long,  strong  plea  for 
the  continuance  of  the  Southern  stations  of  the  Mission.  Why 
did  he  leave  that  letter  (written  by  the  Moderator  of  the  meet- 
ing and  endorsed  by  its  clerk),  which  would  have  been  of  great 
help  to  him,  if  his  main  object  had  been  to  secure  the  rescind- 
ing of  the  above  mentioned  order?"  But  not  one  word 'of 
this  16-page  letter  of  E.  Walker,  endorsed  by  C.  Eells,  and 
dated  Ck:tober  3,  but  not  finished  till  Oct.  8,  1842,  does  M. 
Eells  in  his  search  for  "truth  wherever  found"  quote  for  the 
benefit  of  his  readers,  nor  does  he  give  its  date,  which  would 
be  enough  of  itself  to  disprove  his  assertion  in  1885  that  it 
arrived  at  Wailatpu  (165  miles  from  Eells'  and  Walker's  sta- 
tion), on  October  3,  as  well  as  his  assertion  in  the  above  quoted 
paragraph  that  it  reached  Whitman's  station  on  October  5th. 
It  is  also  certain  from  Walker's  letter  of  Feb.  28,  1843,  and 
from  his  Journal  of  Nov.  1,  1842,  and  from  Mrs.  Whitman's 
letter  of  Oct.  17,  1842,  that  instead  of  October  5th  being  the 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH.  57 

day  agreed  upon  as  C.  Eells  declared  35  and  41  years  after- 
wards in  his  various  "statements"  (wholly  unsupported  by  any 
contemporaneous  letters  or  other  written  documents),  it  was 
a  date  not  earlier  than  October  17th  that  was  agreed  upon. 
This  letter  of  Oct.  3-8,  1842  (written  by  Walker  and  endorsed 
by  Eells),  and  of  which  a  duplicate  was  received  by  the  Secre- 
tary of  the  American  Board  on  May  3,  1843,  not  on^y  contained 
"a  long  and  strong  plea  for  the  continuance  of  the  mission," 
but  a  positive  statement  that  to  carry  out  the  order  of  the  Board 
issued  in  February,  1842,  ordering  the  discontinuance  of  the 
Southern  branch  of  the  Mission  (i.  e.,  three  of  its  four  stations) 
and  recalling  Spalding  and  Gray  to  the  States  meant  the  de- 
struction of  the  Mission,  and  also  a  positive  statement  that 
Whitman's  going  to  the  States,  instead  of  being  discussed  for 
part  of  two  days  (as  Rev.  C.  Eells  asserted  in  his  1883  affi- 
davit), on  a  political  mission  was  not  even  proposed  by  him 
till  just  as  the  others  were  about  to  start  home  (on  the  morning 
of  September  28th),  which  was  after  the  record  of  the  Special 
Meeting  had  been  made  up  and  signed.  This  is  fully  con- 
firmed by  Walker's  Journal,  which  states  under  date  of  Sep- 
tember 28,  1842,  that  it  was  at  breakfast  on  that  morning 
that  Dr.  Whitman  "let  out  his  plan"  to  go  to  the  States.  But 
there  is  not  the  least  intimation  either  in  the  official  report  of  the 
meeting,  or  in  Walker's  letter  endorsed  by  C.  Eells,  or  in 
Walker's  Journal,  or  in  any  subsequent  letter  or  diary  of 
Walker,  or  C.  Eells,  or  H.  H.  Spalding,  or  W.  H.  Gray  prior 
to  Spalding's  articles  in  the  Pacific  in  October  and  November, 
1865,  and  in  the  cases  of  Gray  and  C.  Eells  prior  to  1866,  that 
anything  but  the  business  of  the  Mission  was  discussed  at  that 
Special  Meeting  of  September  26-27,  1842,  while  from 
Walker's  pen  not  a  sentence  has  ever  been  produced  which 
furnishes  the  least  support  to  any  version  of  the  story  that  the 
political  destinies  of  Oregon  were  even  mentioned  at  that  Spe- 
cial Meeting,  or  that  Whitman's  ride  had  any  political  purpose 
or  accomplished  any  political  result.  Having  hastily  discussed 
his  going  on  the  morning  of  the  28th,  without  again  convening 
the  Special  Meeting,  they  passed  two  "Resolves,"  but  did  not 
put  them  into  the  record  of  the  Special  Meeting  either  as  an 
Appendix,  or  otherwise,  so  that  as  far  as  appears  by  its  report, 
signed  by  E.  Walker,  Moderator,  and  Cushing  Eells,  Scribe, 
Whitman's  going  to  the  States  for  any  purpose  was  not  even 
mentioned  in  the  Special  Meeting.  One  of  these  two  "Resolu- 
tions" of  September  28,  1842,  approved  of  W.  H.  Gray's  with- 
drawing from  the  Mission  (though  the  last  sentence  but 
one  in  the  official  report  of  the  Special  Meeting  states  that 
they  had  refused  to  pass  a  similar  resolution  that  Gray  had 
offered  on  the  26th.) 

The  second  of  these  resolutions   (quoted  verbatim  on  p.  13 
ante)  was 


58  REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH. 

THE  ONLY  DOCUMENT  THAT  WHITMAN  TOOK  TO  THE  AMERICAN 

BOARD  FROM  THE  THREE  MEN  WHO  REMAINED  ASSOCIATED 

WITH    HIM   IN   THE  MISSION. 

This  Resolve  authorized  Whitman  "to  visit  the  United  States 
as  soon  as  practicable  to  confer  with  the  Committee  of  the 
A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  in  regard  to  the  interests  of  this  Mission,"  and 
was  signed  by  E.  Walker,  Moderator,  Cushing  Eells,  Scribe, 
and  H.  H.  Spalding,  while  Gray  unquestionably  knew  all  about 
this  document.  Yet  when,  in  1865-6,  Spalding,  Gray  and  C. 
Eells  published  their  varying  versions  of  the  Whitman  Saved 
Oregon  story,  each  of  them  declared  that  Whitman's  sole  pur- 
pose in  making  that  ride  was  the  patriotic  desire  to  save  Oregon 
to  the  United  States,  and  never  in  any  of  their  subsequent 
"statements"  on  the  subject  did  any  one  of  them  give  the  least 
intimation  that  there  was  anything  in  the  condition  of  the  Mis- 
sion to  impel  him  to  make  that  ride,  nor  did  any  one  of  them 
admit  that  he  had  ever  heard  of  the  order  to  discontinue  the 
Southern  branch  of  the  Mission  (i.  e.,.  Kamiah,  Rev.  A.  B. 
Smith's  station,  who  had  left  the  Mission  in  1841,  though  that 
was  not  known  to  the  Committee  of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  when 
they  issued  this  order  in  February,  1842),  Lapwai,  Rev.  H.  H. 
Spalding's  station,  and  Wailatpu,  Dr.  Whitman's  station,  leav- 
ing to  be  continued  only  Tshimakain,  Rev.  C.  Eells'  and  E. 
Walker's  station,  and  recalling  Gray  and  Spalding  (i.  e.,  two 
out  of  the  five  men  remaining  connected  with  the  Mission) 
tc  the  States.  Though  Rev.  M.  Eells  knows  all  about  this  or- 
der, and  knows  that  nothing  but  this  order  and  Gray's  deser- 
tion of  the  Mission  are  mentioned  in  the  official  report  of  the 
Special  Meeting  (contained  in  his  father's  14-page  letter,  dated 
October  3,  1842,  endorsed  as  correct  by  Walker)  as  having 
been  discussed  at  that  meeting,  he  has  never  in  all  his  volum- 
inous writings  quoted  the  order,  nor  quoted  one  word  from 
his  father's  14-page  letter  of  October  3,  1842,  nor  from 
Walker's  16-page  letter  of  October  3,  1842,,  endorsed  as  correct 
by  his  father  (which  he  admits  he  has  in  his  possession  (Cf. 
Reply  p.  68),  nor  ever  quoted  the  above  "Resolve"  of  Septem- 
ber 28,  authorizing  Whitman  to  go  to  the  States,  not  to  save 
Oregon,  but  to  save  the  Mission.  Duplicates  of  these  letters 
were  sent  to  the  American  Board  via  the  Sandwich  Islands, 
for  fear  that  Dr.  Whitman  might  not  get  through,  and  were 
received  at  the  American  Board  rooms  on  May  3,  1843,  as  tne 
endorsement  of  D.  Greene,  Secretary,  on  them  shows. 

With  this  exposition  of  the  deep  devotion  to  truth  which  Rev. 
M.  Eells  has  displayed  in  suppressing  every  word  of  the 
correspondence  of  all  the  members  of  the  Oregon  Mission 
with  the  American  Board  prior  to  Whitman's  ride,  though 
that  correspondence,  submitted  by  me  in  manuscripts,  has  con- 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TR&TH.  59 

vinced  not  only  every  historian  that  has  had  the  opportunity 
to  read  even  one-quarter  part  of  them,  but  also  everybody 
making  the  least  pretension  to  being  a  historian — always  ex- 
cepting W.  A.  Mowry — that  it  demonstrates  the  total  falsity 
of  the  whole  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story,  let  us  see  now 
how  he  treats  the  only  letter  of  Whitman's  that  has  ever 
been  found  which  claims  that  anything  but  missionary  busi- 
ness influenced  him  to  make  that  ride,  for  although  in 
several  other  letters  Whitman  makes  most  extravagant 
and  unwarranted  claims  that  great  good  had  resulted  from 
the  ride,  and  from  the  establishment  and  continuance 
of  his  Mission,  there  has  never  been  found  any  other 
letter  but  this  of  April  I,  1847,  m  which  he  makes  any  claim 
that  his  ride  had  any  other  purpose  than  the  business  of  the 
Mission.  How  does  Rev.  M.  Eells,  trying  "To  get  as  near 
the  truth  as  possible,"  treat  this,  the  only  letter  of  Whitman's 
which  claims  that  anything  in  addition  to  missionary  business 
induced  him  to  make  that  ride?  He  quotes  from  it. five  times 
(pp.  41,  66,  69,  77  and  118),  but  though  he  three  times  (pp. 
41,  66  and  118)  quotes  the  first  sentence  from  Rev.  Thomas 
Laurie's  inaccurate  quotation,  he  nowhere  quotes  what 
Whitman  wrote  about  any  other  object  in  his  making  the  ride 
except  to  lead  out  a  migration,  and  nowhere  from  beginning 
to  end  of  his  book  does  he  even  intimate  that  the  Mission 
would  have  been  "broken  up  just  then"  if  Whitman  had  not 
made  his  ride.  Not  only  that,  but,  although  Whitman  himself 
positively  declared  in  this  letter  that  it  would  have  been  broken 
up  just  then  if  he  had  not  made  his  ride,  our  "candid  and 
truth-seeking"  author  (Reply  p.  69)  assures  his  readers  that 
"His  station  would  have  been  certainly  continued  had  he  waited 
until  Spring  to  go." 

SIX  PEOPLE  KNEW  OF  THEIR  OWN  KNOWLEDGE  THE  ORIGIN  AND 
PURPOSE  OF  WHITMAN'S  RIDE. 

Six  people  knew  exactly  the  origin  and  purpose  of  Whitman's 
ride,  viz.,  Rev.  C.  Eells,  Rev.  E.  Walker,  Rev.  H.  H.  Spalding, 
Mr.  W.  H.  Gray,  and  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Whitman  and  we  have  seen 
how  our  candid  and  truth-seeking  author  has  juggled  with  the 
strictly  contemporaneous  letter  of  his  father,  endorsed  by  E. 
Walker  (to  which  he  never  alludes,  though  knowing  that  it 
contains  the  official  report  of  that  meeting  of  the  Mission  held 
September  26-27,  1842,  which  only  discussed  the  business  of 
the  Mission,  and  not  the  political  destiny  of  Oregon),  and  the 
letter  of  Walker  endorsed  by  his  father  in  which  there  is  no 
hint  of  anything  but  missionary  business,  and  the  "Resolve" 
of  September  28,  1842,  signed  by  C.  Eells,  E.  Walker  and  H. 
H.  Spalding,  which  authorized  Whitman  to  go  to  the  States 


60  REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH. 

"To  confer  with  the  Committee  of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  in  regard 
to  the  interests  of  this  Mission,"  and  with  not  the  least  intima- 
tion that  he  was  to  go  for  any  other  purpose.  For  these  (which 
the  few  great  historians  who  have  had  a  chance  to  read  them 
all  in  my  MSS.  agree  are  conclusive  evidence  that  missionary 
business,  and  not  patriotism,  impelled  him  to  make  his  ride), 
our  author  substitutes  his  father's  alleged  "recollections"  from 
1866  to  1882,  though  those  "recollections"  are  not  only  wholly 
unsupported  by  a  single  sentence  of  contemporaneous  written 
or  printed  evidence,  but  on  all  points  on  which  we  can  compare 
them  with  contemporaneous  written  documents  are  proved  be- 
yond any  doubt  to  be  wholly  incorrect.  Let  us  see  how  our 
truth-seeking  author  treats  the  evidence  of  the  others. 

THE    SPALDING-GRAY    VERSION    OF    THE    ORIGIN    OF    WHITMAN^ 
RIDE  TOTALLY  REPUDIATED  BY  REV.  M.  EELLS. 

We  have  already  seen  (pp.  40-42  ante)  that  Dr.  Mowry,  while 
using  a  great  amount  of  what  Gray  and  Spalding  after  1864-66 
"recollected" — or  imagined — about  Whitman's  ride,  and  en- 
dorsing them  as  good,  truthful  men  whose  "recollections"  may 
safely  be  depended  upon  as  to  the  place  Whitman  should  oc- 
cupy in  the  history  of  Oregon,  himself  totally  rejects  all  that 
they  wrote  about  Whitman's  ride,  which  was  a  matter  of  their 
own  personal  knowledge  and  experience,  to-wit,  its  origin,  by 
not  even  alluding  to  the  Spalding-Gray  version  of  the  great 
dinner  at  Walla  Walla,  and  the  taunt  anent  the  announcement 
of  the  speedy  arrival  of  the  Red  River  settlers,  etc.,  nor  to  their 
"recollection"  that  to  save  Oregon  was  the  "sole  purpose"  of 
his  ride,  nor  to  their  equally  positive  "recollection"  that  Whit- 
man barely  succeeded  in  preventing  the  trading  off  of  Oregon 
fcl  the  Ashburton  treaty  for  a  codfishery  on  the  banks  of  New- 
foundland. 

Rev.  M.  Eells  in  like  manner  calmly  repudiates  all  of  these 
"recollections"  of  Gray  and  Spalding,  (since  they  have  been 
proved  beyond  any  dispute  to  be  totally  false,)  but  still,  like 
Dr.  Mowry,  quotes  extensively  from  them  to  support  other 
parts  of  the  Saving  Oregon  story,  and,  carefully  suppressing 
their  contemporary  letters  and  diaries,  with  those  of  his  father 
and  Rev.  E.  Walker,  which  demonstrate  beyond  any  doubt 
the  falsity  of  the  whole  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story,  he 
imposes  upon  the  credulity  of  his  readers  as  trustworthy  his- 
tory what  Gray  and  Spalding  "recollected*"  about  what  Whit- 
man said  and  did  in  Missouri  and  in  Washington,  from  2,000 
tc  3,000  miles  away  from  them ! 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (/)  FOR  TRUTH.  61 

MR.  EELLS'  TREATMENT  OF  THE  FIVE  LETTERS  OF  MRS  WHITMAN, 

WHICH  STATE  THAT  HIS  RIDE  WAS  ON  THE  BUSINESS 

OF   THE   MISSION. 

We  have  seen  (on  pp.  16-18  ante)  that  Mrs.  Whitman  on  Sep- 
tember 29  and  30,  1842,  wrote  two  letters  in  which  she  explicitly 
declared  that  her  husband  was  going  to  make  his  ride  on  the 
business  of  the  Mission,  and  on  March  11,  April  14  and  May 
18,  1843,  wrote  three  more  letters,  in  each  of  which  it  was 
necessarily  implied  that  his  ride  was  on  the  business  of  the 
Mission,  and  we  have  seen  how  Dr.  Mowry  juggles  with  these, 
the  only  letters  in  which  she  ever  wrote  anything  concerning 
the  purpose  of  his  ride.  Rev.  M.  Eells  knows  perfectly  well 
about  all  these  letters. 

How  does  our  candid  author  "seeking  for  the  truth  of  history 
wherever  found"  treat  these  letters?  He  does  not  quote  a 
word  from  them,  nor  in  any  way  refer  to  them  in  such  a  way 
that  his  readers  can  learn  anything  about  where  to  look  for 
them,  or  obtain  any  other  information  of  their  contents  than 
is  contained  in  the  following  (Reply,  p.  35),  "He"  (i.  e.,  Prof. 
Bourne)  can  find  from  her  letters  that  before  the  Doctor  started 
East  he  intended  to  go  to  Washington." 

MR.     EELLS'    TREATMENT    OF    THE    FIRST    TWO    ACCOUNTS    EVER 

PRINTED  OF  THE  ORIGIN  AND  PURPOSE  OF  WHITMAN^  RIDE 

IN     THE     MISSIONARY     HERALD,     SEPTEMBER,     1843, 

AND   JULY,    1848. 

The  only  remaining  "original  sources"  or  contemporaneous 
accounts  of  the  origin  and  purpose  of  Whitman's  ride  are  the 
two  official  accounts  in  the  Missionary  Herald,  and  (on  pp.  18- 
20  ante)  they  have  been  quoted  and  the  failure  of  Dr.  Mowry 
and  every  other  advocate  of  the  Saving  Oregon  story  to  quote 
them  has  been  stated. 

How  does  our  "candid"  author,  in  his  earnest  search  for 
"the  truth  of  history  wherever  found"  deal  with  these  strictly 
contemporaneous  accounts  of  the  origin  and  purpose  of  Whit- 
man's ride,  and  the  only  accounts  of  that  origin  and  purpose 
ever  printed  till  the  Saving  Oregon  theory  of  it  was  published 
in  1864-66,  remembering  that  both  these  accounts  distinctly 
declare  that  the  ride  was  on  the  business  of  the  Mission?  To 
the  second  account  he  does  not  allude  in  this  "Reply,"  nor  in 
any  of  the  numerous  articles  he  has  written  in  defense  of  the 
Whitman  Legend,  and  from  the  first  he  only  quotes  two  words, 
as  follows:  (Reply,  p.  41),  (writing  of  the  Special  Meeting 
which  authorized  Whitman's  ride).  "In  Miss.  Herald  for 
September,  1843,  '*  was  stated  by  the  editor  that  such  a  meeting 


6a  REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH. 

was  held,  but  he  said  that  it  was  'last  October.'    This  was  scien- 
tific, but  it  was  not  the  truth." 

Our  truth  seeking  author  quotes  nothing  more  of  this,  the  first 
account  ever  printed  as  to  the  origin  and  purpose  of  Whit- 
man's ride,  from  title  page  to  finis  of  this  "Reply,"  except  this 
quibble  over  the  petty  mistake  of  the  editor  in  writing  "last 
October,"  when,  as  a  fact,  the  meeting  was  held  September 
26  and  27.  Mr.  Eells'  statement  that  this  trivial  error  "was 
scientific"  is  nonsense.  Scientific  history,  according  to  his  own 
inaccurate  definition  of  it  (Reply,  p.  37),  is  "The  facts  written 
at  or  near  the  time  they  occurred,"  and  "last  October"  was 
not  "a  fact"  but  a  blunder  of  the  editor  of  the  Missionary  Her- 
ald, doubtless  due  to  the  fact  that  both  C.  Eells'  letter  and  E. 
Walker's  letter  were  dated  October  3,  1842.  But  C.  Eells' 
was  the  "Scribe"  of  that  meeting  and  his  letter  begins  its  offi- 
cial record  as  follows:  "A  Special  Meeting  of  the  Oregon 
Mission  was  called  on  the  26th  of  September,  1843."  I*  1S  plain, 
therefore,  that  the  editor  of  the  Missionary  Herald  did  not 
refer  to  that  official  record  for  the  date,  but  assumed  that  be- 
cause the  two  letters  were  dated  October  3,  1842,  that  the 
meeting  was  held  "last  October."  Scientific  history  is  history 
honestly,  carefully  and  accurately  written  by  candid  and  com- 
petent persons,  from  the  very  best  authorities  obtainable, 
which  means,  always  from  the  original  sources  when  they 
exist  and  are  accessible.  As  the  official  record  of  that  meeting, 
stating  that  it  was  called  to  order  September  26,  and  closed 
September  2y,  1842,  was  in  the  office  of  the  Secretary  of  the 
American  Board,  it  was  not  "scientific"  for  him,  instead  of  re- 
ferring to  it  and  giving  the  correct  date,  to  write  "last  Octo- 
ber." On  p.  42  we  have  another  illustration  of  the  muddled 
condition  of  Mr.  Eells'  mind  on  this  question  of  scientific  his- 
tory. He  states  that  a  pamphlet  about  Mason  County,  Wash- 
ington, was  published  in  July,  1901,  for  distribution  at  the 
Buffalo  Pan  American  exposition,  "which  hence  would  be  be- 
lieved to  be  authentic,"  and  that  it  stated  that  Martin  Koop- 
man  "conducted  a  restaurant  at  Hoodsport,"  and  Mr.  Eells 
continues,  "Now  this  is  scientific  because  its  author  went  there 
before  he  wrote  it,  took  four  pictures  of  the  place  for  his 
pamphlet,  and  was  supposed  to  know.  But  the  truth  is  that 
Mr.  Koopman  does  not  and  never  has  kept  a  restaurant  there, 
but  a  saloon."  That  is,  according  to  Mr.  Eells'  ideas  of  scien- 
tific history,  every  man  who  dashes  off  an  advertising  pamphlet 
for  gratuitous  distribution,  no  matter  how  careless,  or  dis- 
honest, or  indifferent  to  truth  he  may  be,  is  a  writer  of  "scien- 
tific history,"  if,  perchance,  he  has  visited  the  locality  of  which 
he  writes,  and  taken  some  pictures  of  it ! 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (f)  FOR  TRUTH.  63 

THE  POSITION  OF  THE  NATIONAL  GOVERNMENT  ON  THE  OREGON 

BOUNDARY. 

Let  us  turn  now  to  official  documents  showing  the  position 
of  our  Government  as  to  Oregon.  In  1826,  eight  years  before 
any  missionary  went  to  Oregon,  and  ten  years  before  Whitman 
established  his  Mission  there,  President  J.  Q.  Adams  instructed 
Henry  Clay,  Secretary  of  State,  to  direct  Gallatin,  our  Minister 
at  London,  to  notify  the  British  Government  that  "49  degrees 
was  our  ultimatum  for  the  northern  boundary  of  Oregon,"  and 
with  slight  variations  in  phraseology  these  instructions  were  sent 
in  three  letters,  dated  June  19,  June  23,  and  August  9,  1826,  and 
that  of  June  23  is  sufficient  of  itself  to  wipe  away  all  the  ridicu- 
lous assertions  made  about  our  Government  having  been  misled 
by  English  misrepresentation  about  the  worthlessness  of  Ore- 
gon. It  read  as  follows  :  "Mr.  Crook's  information  adds  but  little 
to  what  was  previously  possessed.  If  the  land  on  the  North- 
west Coast,  between  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  River  and  the 
parallel  of  49  degrees  be  bad,  and  therefore  we  should  lose 
but  little  in  relinquishing  it,  the  same  consideration  will  apply 
to  the  British.  The  President  cannot  consent  to  vary  the  line 
proposed  in  your  instructions."  (Cf.  for  these  three  letters, 
Clay  to  Gallatin  Am.  State  Papers  For.  Relations,  Vol.  VI., 
Doc.  458.)  No  Administration  ever  proposed  to  recede  from 
this  "ultimatum"  of  49  degrees,  and  in  1838,  the  Senate  by 
unanimous  resolution  requested  the  War  Department  to  pre- 
pare a  map  of  Oregon,  which  was  accordingly  done  by  the 
Topographical  Bureau  of  the  War  Department. 

THE    "OFFICIAL   ULTIMATUM    MAP." 

This  map  represented  49  degrees  to  the  Pacific  as  the  north- 
ern boundary  of  Oregon,  and  out  in  the  Pacific  Ocean,  where 
no  rivers  or  mountain  ranges  would  obscure  the  printing  or 
divert  attention  from  it,  appeared,  in  plain  type,  the  following : 
"The  prolongation  of  the  49th  parallel  from  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains to  the  Pacific  has  been  assumed  as  the  northern  boundary 
of  the  United  States  possessions  on  the  Northwest  Coast,  in 
consequence  of  the  following  extract  from  the  Hon.  H.  Gay's 
letter  to  Mr.  Gallatin,  dated  June  19,  1826  (See  Doc.  199,  29th 
Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  H.  of  R.)  :  'You  are  authorized  to  propose 
the  annulment  of  the  third  article  of  the  Convention  of  1818, 
and  the  extension  of  the  line  on  the  parallel  of  49  degrees  from 
the  Eastern  slope  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  where  it  now  ter- 
inates  to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  as  the  permanent  boundary  be- 
tween the  two  powers  in  that  quarter.  This  is  our  ultimatum 
and  you  may  so  announce  it.'  "  This  "Ultimatum  Map"  was 
used  in  the  report  of  the  Com.  on  Oregon,  of  which  Senator 


64  REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH. 

Linn  was  Chairman,  June  6,  1838,  also  in  Cushing's  report  to 
the  H.  of  R.  January  4,  and  his  supplemental  report  February 
16,  1839,  also  in  the  report  of  the  Mil.  Com.  of  the  H.  of  R., 
commonly  known  as  Pendleton's  first  report  May  27,  1842, 
also  in  the  second  report  of  that  Mil.  Com.,  commonly  known 
as  Pendleton's  2nd  report  January  4,  1843.  All  these  reports 
were  unanimous  on  the  part  of  the  committee,  and  all  were 
unanimously  adopted  by  the  body  to  which  they  were  made, 
and  of  them  "in  addition  to  the  usual  number"  10,000 
copies  of  Cushing's,  and  5,000  of  each  of  Pendleton's  were 
printed  for  distribution,  so  that  including  "the  usual  num- 
ber" of  each,  there  were  26,000  or  more  copies  of  this 
official  "Ultimatum  Map"  printed  by  direct  votes  of  the 
Senate  and  the  House  between  June  6,  1838,  and  January 
4,  1843.  How  was  it  possible  for  our  government  more  em- 
phatically to  notify  all  the  world  of  its  inflexible  determination 
to  insist  on  49  degrees  to  the  coast  as  the  northern  boundary  of 
Oregon?  Neither  M.  Eells  nor  any  other  advocate  of  the 
Saving  Oregon  theory  of  Whitman's  ride  has  ever  even  alluded 
to  these  "ultimatum"  instructions  to  Gallatin,  nor  to  this  "Ulti- 
matum Map." 

REV.    M.    EELLS'   TREATMENT   OF   LIEUT.    WILKES'    EXPLORATIONS. 

We  have  already  learned  (pp.  29-32  ante)  of  the  extent  and 
thoroughness  of  Lieut.  Chas.  Wilkes'  exploration  of  the  Oregon 
territory,  by  land  and  water,  "with  a  sloop  of  war,  a  brig  of 
war,  two  launches,  ten  boats  and  upwards  of  300  men"  from 
April  28  to  October  10,  1841,  and  of  his  very  enthusiastic  "Spe- 
cial Rept."  on  the  Oregon  territory,  filed  in  the  Navy  Depart- 
ment, at  Washington,  June  13,  1842,  and  of  the  ingenious  way 
in  which  Dr.  Mowry,  by  cribbing  a  page  of  my  inferences  as  to 
why  the  Administration  in  1843  was  not  willing  to  have  the 
whole  of  that  "Special  Rept."  printed,  but  without  quoting  a 
word  from  that  report,  or  giving  his  readers  any  information 
as  to  when  it  was  filed  in  the  Navy  Department,  or  anything 
else  which  would  inform  them  as  to  its  immense  significance 
in  promoting  migration  to  Oregon,  and  furnishing  the  gov- 
ernment full  and  fresh  information  in  everything  of  the  least 
importance  relating  to  Oregon  aflairs  fully  nine  months 
before  Whitman  could  have  reached  Washington,  has  avoided 
giving  his  readers  any  knowledge  which  would  enable  them 
to  judge  of  the  extent,  the  value  and  the  timeliness  of  Wilkes' 
work  in  exploring  and  reporting  on  Oregon. 

Skilful  as  Dr.  Mowry  has  proved  himself  in  concealing  the 
truth  about  this  important  matter,  he  is  thrown  completely  in 
the  shade  by  the  "candid  and  truth-seeking"  Dr.  Eells,  who, 
from  title  page  to  finis  of  his  reply  (as  well  as  in  his  pamphlet 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH,  65 

Marcus  Whitman,  M.  D.,  Portland,  Or.,  1883.),  does  not  in- 
form his  readers  that  Wilkes  ever  saw  Oregon  at  all,  but  only 
says  of  him  (Reply,  p.  86)  :  "Commodore  Wilkes,  in  1841,  had 
praised  the  harbor  of  San  Francisco  as  'one  of  the  finest,  if 
not  the  very  best,  harbor  in  the  world !'  " 

REV.  M.  EELLS'  TREATMENT  OF  THE  ACTIONS  OF  TYLER'S  ADMIN- 
ISTRATION   RELATING   TO   OREGON. 

With  equal  ingenuity  he  suppresses  all  the  abundant  and  in- 
disputable contemporaneous  documentary  evidence  that  Tyler's 
Administration  was  inflexibly  determined  to  accept  of  no  line 
south  of  49  degrees  for  the  northern  boundary  of  Oregon,  and 
that  neither  Whitman  nor  anyone  else,  in  March,  or  April, 
1843,  or  at  ally  other  time  during  Tyler's  term  as  President, 
had  influenced  him  to  any  change  of  the  policy  he  had  about 
Oregon  prior  to  March,  1843. 

We  have  heretofore  stated  (p.  28  ante)  that  President 
Tyler's  two  first  annual  messages,  December,  1841,  and  De- 
cember 1842,  contained  strong  paragraphs  on  Oregon  and 
that  Dr.  Mowry  does  not  even  allude  to  them.  The  same  is 
true  of  Rev.  M.  Eells. 

We  have  also  (pp.  28-29  ante)  learned  about  Dr.  Elijah 
White's  connection  with  Oregon  affairs,  and  the  suppression 
by  Dr.  Mowry  of  everything  about  Dr.  White,  except  the  fact 
that  he  arrived  at  Whitman's  mission  with  a  considerable  party 
of  settlers  early  in  September,  1842. 

How  does  the  Rev.  M.  Eells,  D.  D.,  "seeking  after  the  truth 
of  history  wherever  it  can  be  found"  treat  Dr.  White  and  his 
work  for  and  in  Oregon? 

On  page  106  he  devotes  nearly  200  words  to  showing  why 
his  "witnesses"  would  not  confound  Dr.  White  with  Dr.  Whit- 
man, but  he  carefully  refrains  everywhere  in  his  writings  in 
defense  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story  from  any  men- 
tion of  the  following  five  things  which  would  be  very  apt  to 
cause  people  many  years  after  the  event  to  transfer  to  Dr. 
Whitman  the  deeds  and  words  of  Dr.  White. 

(1.)  That  Dr.  White  as  well  as  Dr.  Whitman  had  been  a 
missionary  to  the  Oregon  Indians. 

(2.)  That  in  January  and  February,  1842,  Dr.  White  un- 
questionably had  interviewed  President  Tyler,  Secretarys  Web- 
ster, Upshur  and  Spencer,  and  Senators  Linn  and  Benton. 

(3.)  That  he  had  then  been  directed  by  the  Tyler  Adminis- 
tration to  raise  a  migration  to  Oregon. 

(4.)  That  he  held  public  meetings  in  the  spring  of  1^42 
in  various  cities — Buffalo,  Cincinnati,  Louisville  and  St.  Louis 
— to  promote  a  migration  to  Oregon,  and  had  some  newspaper 
notice  thereof. 


66  REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (f)  FOR  TRUTH. 

(5.)  That  he  organized  and  was  elected  leader  of  the  first 
large  overland  migration,  which  left  the  Missouri  frontier 
May  26,  1842. 

THE  ASHBURTON  TREATY.       BENTON'S  OPPOSITION  TO  IT.         WEB- 
STERNS    POSITIVE  ASSERTION    OF   HIS   INFLEXIBLE   AD- 
HERENCE TO  49  DEGREES  AS  THE  NORTH  LINE 
OF  OREGON,  AND  REV.  M.  EELLS'  TREAT- 
MENT  OF  THIS   MATTER. 

We  have  already  seen  (pp.  32-34  ante)  how  carefully  Dr. 
Mowry  avoids  giving  his  readers  any  information  about  Lord 
Ashburton's  instructions  on  the  Oregon  boundary  question, 
and  Webster's  positive  denials  January  18  and  February  3, 
1843,  that  he  had  made,  entertained  or  meditated  accepting 
the  Columbia  river,  or  any  other  line  south  of  49  degrees  as  a 
negotiable  boundary  line  for  the  United  States. 

It  is  now  more  than  16  years  since  in  a  letter  to  Rev.  Dr. 
Eells  I  called  his  attention  to  this  twice-repeated  denial  by 
Webster  on  the  floor  of  the  Senate,  through  his  lifelong  per- 
sonal and  political  friend,  Rufus  Choate,  of  that  indispensable 
postulate  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story,  that  Webster 
and  Tyler  were  indifferent  as  to  the  fate  of  Oregon,  and  ready 
to  surrender  it  to  England,  when  Whitman,  an  utterly  un- 
known man  reached  the  states,  and  in  some  mysterious  way 
prevented  it,  but  in  all  his  study  of  the  subject  since  that  time, 
and  all  his  writings  on  it  he  has  never  apparently  found,  and 
certainly  has  never  intimated  to  his  readers  that  they  could 
find  this  "authorized"  .statement  by  Webster  of  his  position  on 
the  Oregon  boundary,  in  the  Congressional  Globe,  27  Cong., 
3d  Sess.  (pp.  1 71 -2)  and  its  Appendix  (pp.  222-9.) 

MR.    EELLS'  TREATMENT  OF  THE  GREAT  DEBATE  IN   THE  SENATE 
ON  LINN'S  BILL,  IN   JANUARY  AND  FEBRUARY,    1843. 

We  have  already  in  exposing  Dr.  Mowry's  ingenious  avoid- 
ance of  giving  his  readers  any  information  of  value  about  this 
great  debate  (Cf.  pp.  32-35  ante)  shown  how  vital  a  full  knowl- 
edge of  it  is  to  any  understanding  of  the  truth  or  falsity  of 
the  claim  that  Whitman  Saved  Oregon,  on  account  of  (a.)  the 
great  interest  the  Oregon  question  excited,  as  shown  by  the 
fact  that  2y  out  of  50  Senators  took  part  in  the  discussion, 
including  nearly  all  the  leaders  of  both  parties;  (b.)  the  fact 
that  it  was  stated  over  and  over  again  in  the  discussion  that 
the  Senate  was  "unanimously  of  the  opinion  that  our  title  to 
Oregon  was  incontestable,  at  least  as  far  north  as  49  degrees ;" 
(c.)  the  two  explicit  declarations  of  Webster,  by  his  friend 
Choate,    hereinbefore    quoted,     which     definitely     committed 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH.  67 

Tyler's  Administration  to  the  line  of  49  degrees  six  weeks 
before  Whitman  could  have  reached  Washington,  and  (d.) 
the  fact  that  an  analysis  of  the  vote  and  a  comparison  of  it 
with  the  speeches  shows  that  on  February  3,  1843,  not  merely 
a  bare  majority,  but  certainly  one  more  than  two-thirds  of  the 
entire  Senate  were  ready  to  enact  any  legislation  about  Ore- 
gon that  we  had  a  right  to  enact,  without  first  giving  the 
twelve  months'  notice  which  was  all  that  was  needful  to  abro- 
gate the  treaty  of  1827. 

Our  "candid"  author  searching  for  "the  truth  of  history 
wherever  it  may  be  found"  has  absolutely  nothing  to  say  about 
this  great  debate,  except  that  on  page  50  he  quotes  six  lines 
from  the  speech  of  that  political  nonentity,  McDuffie,  of  South 
Carolina,  but  with  no  intimation  that  it  was  the  only  such  fool- 
ish speech  on  the  Oregon  question  delivered  at  that  session  of 
Congress. 

MR.   EELLS   QUOTES  TWO   FABRICATIONS  ALLEGED  TO   HAVE  BEEN 
UTTERED   BY   WEBSTER. 

Yet,  never  having  in  all  his  writings  intimated  that  Webster 
had  thus  himself,  in  1842,  in  his  negotiations  with  Ashburton, 
and  in  these  two  explicit  statements  of  January  18  and  Febru- 
ary 3,  1843,  committed  himself  and  Tyler's  Administration  ir- 
revocably to  "no  line  south  of  49  degrees  as  a  negotiable  boun- 
dary line  for  the  United  States,"  he  devotes  16  pages  of  this 
"Reply"  (79-95),  to  an  attempt  to  show  that  Webster,  in 
March  or  April,  1843,  was  ready  to  part  with  Oregon  because 
he  thought  it  worthless,  when  Whitman  -(who,  as  late  as  April, 
1846,  according  to  Spalding's  letter,  edited  by  Whitman,  and 
published  in  Palmer's  Journal,  knew  nothing  about  the  only 
part  really  in  dispute  after  1824),  arrived  in  Washington  and 
prevented  it.  To  prove  this  Mr.  Eells  quotes  one  palpable 
forgery  (p.  82),  in  the  extract  from  a  speech  which  it  is  al- 
leged Webster  delivered  on  a  proposition-  before  the  Senate  in 
1844,  f°r  a  mail  route  from  Independence,  Mo.,  to  the  mouth 
of  the  Columbia,  beginning,  "What  do  you  want  of  that  vast 
and  worthless  area?"  The  internal  evidence  that  Webster 
never  wrote  this  is  irresistible,  for,  whatever  were  Webster's 
failings,  he  always  uttered  sensible  and  dignified  English  in 
discussing  important  public  affairs,  and  the  final  sentence  of 
this  extract  as  quoted  by  Gunsaulus  in  his  Introduction  to 
Nixon's  "How  Marcus  Whitman  Saved  Oregon,"  is,  "Mr. 
President,  I  will  never  vote  one  cent  from  the  public  treasury 
to  place  the  Pacific  Coast  one  inch  nearer  to  Boston  than  it  is 
now."  When  I  wrote  to  Dr.  Gunsaulus  and  asked  his  authority 
for  this  he  was  obliged  to  confess  that  he  had  none.  Finding 
it  in  Fields'  "Our  Western  Archipelago,"  and  obtaining  from 


68  REV.  DR.  BELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH. 

Dr..  Henry  M.  Field  the  admission  that  his  only  authority  for 
it  was  a  newspaper  slip,  sent  him  by  Mr.  Geo.  L.  Chase,  an 
insurance  man  of  Hartford,  Conn.,  and  being  assured  by  Mr. 
Chase  that  he  clipped  it  from  a  newspaper  when  traveling 
on  the  Pacific  Coast,  and  sent  it  to  Dr.  Field,  not  expecting  him 
to  publish  it,  but  merely  for  his  opinion  as  to  its  correctness, 
1  abandoned  all  further  attempt  to  find  who  fabricated  it.  I 
subsequently  found  it  used  by  H.  H.  Bancroft,  in  "Chronicles 
of  the  Builders,"  Vol.  I,  pp.  518-19,  but  as  that  was  not  copy- 
righted till  1890,  and  as  Mr.  M.  Eells  gives  as  his  authority  a 
manuscript  written  by  a  Mrs.  C.  S.  Pringle,  in  December, 
1884;  and  as  presumably  she  did  not  fabricate  it,  but  like  Mr. 
Chase,  clipped  it  from  some  newspaper,  there  is  no  likelihood 
that  its  author  will  ever  be  known.  Not  only  is  its  internal 
evidence  sufficient  to  convince  any  one  with  common  literary 
training  that  Webster  never  uttered  it,  but  that  conviction  is 
rendered  a  certainty  by  the  fact  that  Webster  was  not  in  the 
Senate  from  1841  to  1845,  and  that  no  such. bill  was  ever  in- 
troduced in  the  Senate  till  March,  1846,  and  a  careful  exam- 
ination of  the  Cong.  Globe  shows  that  upon  that  bill  Webster 
did  not  speak  at  all;  and  by  his  great  Faneuil  Hall  (Boston) 
speech  on  Oregon  in  November,  1845,  ne  na^  irrevocably  com- 
mitted himself  individually,  and  the  Whig  party  for  which  he 
spoke,  to  the  line  of  49  degrees  to  the  Pacific.  On  p.  95  he 
quotes  that  other  fabrication,  which  has  now  been  doing  duty 
for  33  years,  in  support  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story, 
as  follows:  "In  confirmation  of  this  E.  D.  P.,  in  1870,  wrote 
that  an  eminent  legal  gentleman  of  Massachusetts,  and  a  per- 
sonal friend  of  Mr.  Webster,  with  whom  he  had  several  times 
conversed  on  the  subject,  remarked  to  E.  D.  P.,  'It  is  safe  to 
assert  that  our  country  owes  it  to  Dr.  Whitman  and  his  asso- 
ciate missionaries,  that  all  the  territory  west  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains  and  south  as  far  as  the  Columbia  River  is  not  now 
owned  by  England,  and  held  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company.'  " 
This  has  heretofore  been  credited,  as  it  was  by  Mr.  Spalding, 
who  first  used  it  (Cf.  p.  23,  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  37,  41st  Cong.,  3d 
Sess.)  to  the  "N.  Y.  Independent,  January,  1870."  Not  Jan- 
uary 27,  as  M.  Eells  says  in  his  footnote,  in  which  also  he 
admits  that  he  does  not  know  in  what  it  appeared,  but  that 
"It  was  found  as  a  scrap  of  a  newspaper,  among  Mr.  Spalding's 
papers,  and  is  signed  E.  D.  P.  or  E.  D.  B.  or  E.  D.  R.,  for  the 
last  letter  is  slightly  torn."  I  have  spent  considerable  time 
and  a  little  money  in  searching  and  having  searched  the  files 
of  newspapers  to  determine,  if  possible,  where  this  first  ap- 
peared, but  without  success,  though  well  aware  that  if  it  had 
appeared  in  all  the  newspapers  on  earth,  its  doubly  anonymous 
character  makes  it  of  not  the  least  evidential  value. 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH.  69 

tyler's  tripartite  scheme. 

That  Tyler  had  an  utterly  impracticable  scheme  in  his  mind 
of  a  tripartite  treaty  between  the  United  States,  Great  Britain 
and  Mexico  is  true,  and  has  been  well  known  since  1885, 
through  Vol.  2,  of  "Letters  and  Times  of  the  Tylers,"  by 
President  L.  G.  Tyler  of  William  and  Mary  College,  Virginia 
(who  was  born  in  1852),  and  who,  like  Fiske,  McMaster, 
Scudder  and  others,  was  imposed  upon  by  Barrows,  and  so 
gave  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon7  story  some  endorsement, 
though,  as  he  wrote  to  me  in  1899/he  had  never  seen  any  con- 
temporaneous mention  of  Whitman,  either  in  his  father's, 
papers  or  those  of  his  half  brother,  John  Tyler,  Jr.,  private 
secretary  to  President  John  Tyler.  On  reading  my  Mss.  he 
was  straightaway  convinced  that  not  only  he,  but  his  half 
brother  John,  had  been  imposed  upon  by  Barrows,  and  that  it 
was  Dr.  White,  and  not  Dr.  Whitman,  whom  Mr.  Reed  saw  in 
Washington,  and  whom  John  Tyler,  Jr.,  thought  he  remem- 
bered, more  than  forty  years  afterwards,  having  seen  at  the 
White  House.  Mr.  M.  Eells  (Reply,"  p.  94)  admits  that  "Dr. 
Whitman  without  doubt  never  heard  of  the  tripartite  plan," 
but  though  this  inchoate  project  was,  as  far  as  any  evidence 
shows,  the  only  one  that  any  President  ever  even  "dreamed 
of,"  as  a  plan,  not  for  yielding  up  any  part  of  Oregon  south 
of  49  degrees,  but  for  selling  for  a  good  round  price  that  part 
north  and  west  of  the  Columbia,  Mr.  Eells  insists  that  in  some 
mysterious  way  Whitman  prevented  that  plan,  of  which  he 
never  heard.  That  President  L.  G.  Tyler  has  for  some  time 
been  fully  satisfied  that  the  Oregon  policy  of  President  John 
TyleiVwas  not  controlled  by  Whitman,  and  that  President 
Tyler's  three  letters  of  December  11  and  18,  1845,  an<^  Jan_ 
uary  1,  1846,  show  beyond  dispute  that  neither  Whitman  nor 
anybody  else,  either  in  the  Spring  of  1843,  nor  f°r  more  than 
two  and  one-half  years  thereafter,  had  modified  in  the  least 
degree  the  ideas  about  the  best  policy  to  pursue  regarding  Ore- 
gon, which  we  know,  from  his  other  correspondence,  that  he 
held  in  1842,  has  been  already  shown.     (Cf.  pp.  35-37  ante.) 

It  scarcely  needs  be  said  that  M.  Eells,  like  all  the  other 
advocates  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story,  has  never  even . 
alluded  to  the  above  mentioned  three  letters  of  President  Tyler. 

DR.  EELLS'  UNWARRANTED  ATTACK  ON  HON.  ELWOOD  EVANS. 

Our  candid  author  assails  the  honesty  and  the  accuracy  of 
the  late  Hon.  Elwood  Evans,  a  Pacific  Coast  historical  writer 
of  some  note,  as  follows.  "Reply"  (p.  22)  "Elwood  Evans,  too, 
properly  falls  under  this  criticism."  In  1883  Dr.  C.  Eells  had 
stated  in  regard  to  the  meeting  of  the  Mission  held  in  Sep- 


70  REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH. 

tember,  1842,  that  a  record  of  it  was  made,  but  that  "the  book 
containing  the  same  was  in  the  keeping  of  the  Whitman  family. 
At  the  time  of  their  massacre,  November  29,  1847,  it  disap- 
peared/' The  house  of  Dr.  Eells  at  the  Whitman  Mission  was 
burned  in  1872,  a  fact  which  Mr.  Evans  knew.  He  had  also 
been  furnished  with  a  pamphlet  containing  the  above  statement 
of  Dr.  Eells.  Yet  in  1884  he  wrote :  "In  1866  Rev.  Cushing 
Eells  had  in  his  possession  the  minutes  of  all  the  missionary 
meetings.  The  assertion  that  those  records  were  destroyed 
by  fire  in  1872  will  not  be  accepted  as  a  satisfactory  excuse  that 
between  1865  and  1872  those  minutes  were  not  appealed  to  to 
settle  the  question  of  what  transpired  at  the  Mission  meeting 
of  1842." 

It  will  be  noticed  that  Mr.  Evans  did  not  say  that  "In  1866 
Rev.  Cushing  Eells  had  in  his  possession  the  record  book 
containing  the  reports  of  all  the  Mission  meetings,"  but  "the 
minutes"  of  those  meetings,  which  is  quite  a  different  matter, 
as  every  one  who  has  had  much  experience  as  a  Secre- 
tary can  testify.  Furthermore,  Rev.  Myron  Eells  himself  was 
the  authority  on  whom  Elwood  Evans  depended  for  those 
dates,  for  in  a  "History  of  tne  Congregational  Association  of 
Oregon  and  Washington,"  by  Rev.  Myron  Eells,  we  read  that 
"The  proceedings  of  the  meetings  of  the  Missions  were  either 
burnt  or  destroyed  at  the  Whitman  massacre  in  1847,  or  at  tne 
time  of  the  fire  at  Rev.  Cushing  Eells'  in  1872."  This  was 
quoted  to  me  by  Mr.  Evans  in  a  letter  dated  Tacoma,  Wash., 
August  11,  1882,  two  and  one-quarter  years  before  the  date  of 
the  article  in  the  Oregonian,  from  which  Rev.  M.  Eells  makes 
this  quotation,  which  he  claims  misquotes  his  father's  state- 
ment about  the  records  of  the  Mission.  Reply  (p.  23),  he  con- 
tinues, "Mr.  Evans  wrote  that  Daniel  Webster  said  in  his 
speech  March  30,  1846.  "The  Government  of  the  United 
States  never  offered  any  line  south  of  49  degrees  (with  the 
navigation  of  the  Columbia)  and  it  never  will.  It  behooves 
all  concerned  to  regard  this  as  a  settled  point.  I  said  as  plainly 
as  I  could  speak  or  put  down  words  in  writing,  that  England 
must  not  expect  anything  south  of  49  degrees.  I  said  so  in 
so  many  words."  The  first  two  sentences  are  in  that  speech. 
Afterwards  when  questioned  he  added  in  regard  to  what  he 
had  just  told  the  Senate,  not  England,  in  1842,  "the  senator 
and  the  Senate  will  do  me  the  justice  to  admit  that  I  said  as 
plainly  as  I  could  and  in  as  short  sentence  as  I  could  frame 
that  England  must  not  expect  anything  south  of  the  49th  de- 
gree," except  that  there  might  be  friendly  negotiations  about 
the  navigation  of  the  Columbia,  and  about  certain  straits, 
sounds  and  islands  in  the  neighboring  seas.  Mr.  Evans's  quo- 
tation is  a  strange  mixture,  and  the  words  "put  down  words 
in  writing"  were  not  then  used  by  Webster." 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH.  yi 

As  usual,  Dr.  Eells  is  incorrect  in  his  criticism.  He  quotes 
from  Webster's  Works  issued  in  185 1-2.  But  turning  to  the 
Cong.  Globe,  1st  Sess.,  29th  Cong.,  March  30,  1846,  we  find 
on  page  569,  1st  column,  that,  in  replying  to  Senator  Allen  of 
Ohio  (who  had  accused  him  of  offering  England  the  river 
Columbia  as  the  boundary),  Webster  said  precisely  what  Mr. 
Evans  quoted  from  him,  as  follows :  "But  the  gentleman  from 
Ohio  and  the  Senate  will  do  me  the  justice  to  allow  that 
I  said  as  plainly  as  I  could  speak,  or  put  down  words  in 
writing,  that  England  must  not  expect  anything  south  of  49 
degrees.  I  said  so  in  so  many  words."  The  first  two  sentences 
quoted  by  Evans  are  on  p.  568  of  the  Globe  of  same  date,  in 
Webster's  reply  to  Senator  J.  M.  Clayton  of  Delaware,  and  are 
also  a  verbatin  quotation. 

REV.  DR.   EELLS'  WHOLLY  UNJUSTIFIABLE  ATTACK   ON  BOTH   MR. 
EVANS  AND  MYSELF. 

"Reply"  (pp.  57-8)  :  "Prof.  Marshall  also  says  in  regard  to 
Rev.  C.  Eells,  'that  as  late  as  April,  1865,  he  denied  to  Hon. 
Elwood  Evans,  the  historian  of  Oregon,  any  knowledge  of  any- 
thing but  missionary  business,  as  impelling  Whitman  to  make 
that  ride.'  (Trans.  Am.  Hist.  Asscn.,  1900,  pp.  235-6.)  The 
writer  has  questioned  Prof.  Marshall  in  regard  to  his  authority 
for  this  statement,  and  in  his  reply  the  Professor  says  that 
Elwood  Evans  wrote  the  same  to  him  some  seventeen  years 
ago,  and  that  he  at  or  about  that  time  printed  the  same  state- 
ment in  one  of  his  newspaper  articles.  In  reply  the  writer  de- 
clares that  he  will  not  believe  this  statement  until  some  better 
proof  is  given  than  this :  for  ( 1 )  the  writer  has  every  newspa- 
per article  that  he  ever  heard  of  that  Mr.  Evans  wrote  on  the 
subject,  especially  between  1881  and  1885,  and  there  is  not  a 
hint  of  such  a  statement  in  any  of  these  articles.  Dr.  Eells  was 
then  alive,  and  the  writer  does  not  think  Mr.  Evans  would  have 
dared  then  to  have  made  the  statement.  (2)  The  writer  will 
not  accept  Mr.  Evans'  statement  on  the  subject,  even  if  he  did 
make  it  to  Professor  Marshall,  for  as  has  already  been  shown, 
Mr.  Evans  made  Mr.  Eells  say  something  in  regard  to  the  de- 
struction of  the  records  of  the  meeting  of  September,  1842, 
which  he  did  not  say,  and  also  made  Mr.  Webster  say  some- 
thing he  did  not  say.  (See  above,  p.  23.)  The  writer  calls  for 
the  letter,  and  feels  sure  that  if  his  father  had  ever  written 
such  a  letter  he  would  have  heard  of  it  before  the  year  1902, 
and  also  that  in  newspaper  articles  which  he  has  by  Mr.  Evans, 
when  he  fully  discussed  Dr.  Eells'  evidence,  Mr.  Evans  would 
have  printed  this  letter." 

But  neither  Mr.  Evans  nor  I  ever  claimed  that  Rev.  Cushing 
Eells  wrote  this   in  a  letter  to  either  of   us,   which   fact  is 


72  REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH. 

perfectly  well  known  to  Rev.  M.  Eells.  It  was  in  a  personal 
interview  with  Mr.  Evans,  when  he  was  gathering  materials 
for  his  history,  that  Rev.  C.  Eells  disclaimed  all  knowledge 
of  any  patriotic  purpose  for  Whitman's  ride,  as  follows:  "I 
had  seen  Mr.  Eells"  (Rev.  Cushing  Eells)  "in  1865.  I  en- 
deavored to  learn  the  history  of  those  missionary  years;  my 
queries  were  particularly  directed  to  the  two  immigrations 
of  1842-3 ;  he  was  as  reticent  as  if  he  knew  nothing,  surely 
he  breathed  not  this  patriotic  claim  for  the  little  missionary 
convocation  of  1842.  True,  that  was  in  April,  1865,  and 
Myron  Eells  has  indicated  the  'great  work  was  not  known 
or  realized  till  1866/  and  possibly  it  was  still  a  secret."  (Cf. 
Art.  on  "Dr.  Whitman  and  Oregon,"  by  Evans,  in  Daily 
Oregonian,  March  15,  1885.  This  article  was  also  reprinted 
in  Weekly  Oregonian,  March  20,  1885.)  As  we  have  seen  the 
second  reason  he  assigns  for  not  believing  Mr.  Evans  is  abso- 
lutely false,  for  Mr.  Evans  neither  made  Rev.  C.  Eells  say  any- 
thing which  he  did  not  say  about  the  destruction  of  the  records 
of  the  mission,  nor  made  Daniel  Webster  in  the  United  States 
Senate  say  anything  which  he  did  not  say.  The  first  reason  is 
equally  false,  for  not  only  did  Mr.  Evans  publish  this  while 
Rev.  C.  Eells  was  living,  but  published  it  in  the  most  widely 
circulated  paper  published  in  the  old  Oregon  Territory,  four 
years  before  Rev.  C.  Eells  died,  and  Rev.  M.  Eells  not  only 
knew  about  its  publication,  but  he  wrote  a  long  answer  to  it — 
(about  9,000  words) — (which  was  published  in  the  Oregonian 
of  May  21,  1885),  and  replied,  as  best  he  could,  to  Mr.  Evans 
under  fifteen  heads — but  carefully  refrained  from  even  alluding 
to  this,  which  he  could  not  have  failed  to  see  in  the  article, 
and  which,  now  that  Mr.  Evans  is  dead,  he  declares  Mr.  Evans 
would  not  have  dared  to  publish  while  his  father  was  living. 
My  scrap-books,  containing  both  articles,  are  now  lying  open 
before  me.  Furthermore,  that  Rev.  M.  Eells  when  he  wrote  this 
"Reply"  had  not  forgotten  about  either  Mr.  Evans'  article  in 
Daily  Oregonian  of  March  15,  1885,  and  Weekly  of  March  20, 
1885,  nor  his  reply  to  it  in  Oregonian  of  May  21,  1885,  is  cer- 
tain, for  in  his  "Reply,"  on  pages  7,  23  and  45,  he  quotes  from, 
and  in  a  footnote  refers  to,  the  article  of  March  20,  1885,  and 
on  pages  7  and  18  also  quotes  from,  and  by  footnote  refers  to, 
his  own  article  of  May  21,  1885,  and  on  pages  100-103  he  uses 
fifty  lines — say,  about  550  words — from  his  article  of  May  21, 
1885,  but  without  stating  whence  he  makes  the  quotation. 

MR.   EELLS"  DISINGENUOUS   STATEMENT  ABOUT   REV.   E.    WALKER. 

An  excellent  example  of  the  curious  notions  about  "candor" 
which  Rev.  M.  Eells  has  acquired  in  his  long  residence  about 
Indian  agencies  is  found  in  a  footnote  (on  p.  59),  concerning 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (f)  FOR  TRUTH.  73 

the  reason  why  no  evidence  has  ever  been  produced  from  Rev. 
E.  Walker  giving  the  least  support  to  any  form  of  the  Whit- 
man Saved  Oregon  story,  as  follows:  "Mr.  Walker  died  in 
1877,  before  this  controversy  arose.  Hence  his  testimony  was 
not  obtained."  Could  anything  more  disingenuous  be  imagined 
than  this?  Eighteen  seventy-seven  was  twelve  years  after  the 
Saving  Oregon  story  was  first  printed  in  full  by  Spalding,  and 
eleven  years  after  Rev.  C.  Eells  published  his  entirely  different 
and  contradictory  version  of  its  origin,  and  "the  controversy" 
was  constantly  on  after  1865,  and  "it  goes  without  saying"  that 
the  advocates  of  the  story  would  have  been  delighted  to  have 
secured  a  statement  endorsing  either  version  of  it  from  Walker, 
or  to  have  used  any  that  he  left  when  he  died,  in  diary  or  letter. 
But  he  was  too  thoroughly  honest  a  man  to  make  any  statement 
they  could  use,  and  his  diary  and  his  letters  are  among  the 
strongest  documents,  that  in  the  opinion  of  all  real  historians 
who  have  read  them,  totally  disprove  the  Saving  Oregon  theory 
of  Whitman's  ride. 

NO   ANTAGONISM   BETWEEN   THE   HUDSON^   BAY    COMPANY    AND 
THESE    MISSIONARIES. 

As  he  has  repeatedly  done  in  his  newspaper  articles,  our 
"candid"  author  in  "Reply"  (pp.  96-7)  assigns  as  the  reason 
why  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story  was  not  published 
earlier  that  the  mission  was  dependent  on  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Company  for  supplies  and  that  it  would  not  have  been  prudent 
to  state  the  real  purpose  of  Whitman's  ride,  as  it  "might  have 
so  alienated  the  company  that  they  would  have  cut  off  the 
supplies/' 

This,  with  much  more  he  has  written,  is  designed  to  convince 
the  public  (which  is  profoundly  ignorant  of  the  valid  evidence 
on  this  subject)  that  there  was  antagonism  between  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Company  and  these  missionaries,  and  the  same  stuff 
at  greater  length  was  written  by  Edwin  Eells  (a  brother  of 
Myron)  to  the  Sunday  School  Times,  and  published  in  its  issue 
of  November  22,  1902. 

«^In  my  forthcoming  "History  of  the  Acquisition  of  Oregon 
and  the  Long-Suppressed  Evidence  About  Marcus  Whitman," 
I  shall  print  scores  of  pages  of  the  letters  and  diaries  of  these 
missionaries,  which  will  convince  every  reader  that  sorrier 
fictions  were  never  printed  than  this  stuff  about  antagonism 
between  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  and  these  missionaries, 
and  that  in  reality  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  treated  all  these 
missionaries  with  the  most  constant  and  unbounded  kindness 
during  the  whole  existence  of  the  mission. 

But  there  is  only  space  here  for  two  items. 

First.     No  sooner  did  news  of  the  Whitman  massacre  reach 


74  REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  {?)  FOR  TRUTH. 

Ft  Vancouver  than  James  Douglas  and  P.  S.  Ogden  fitted  out 
two  boats,  and  with  sixteen  men  and  an  ample  supply  of  Indian 
goods,  started  them  under  the  command  of  Ogden  to  Ft.  Walla 
Walla,  about  300  miles  up  the  Columbia.  Making  utmost  pos- 
sible speed,  they  reached  Walla  Walla  December  19,  and  Ogden 
immediately  began  negotiations  for  the  ransom  of  the  fifty-one 
captives  at  Whitman's  station,  and  the  nine  at  Spalding's  sta- 
tion, who  were  virtually  captives,  since  the  Nez  Perces  would 
only  allow  them  to  leave  on  payment  by  Ogden  of  a  ransom, 
and  so  vigorously  did  he  prosecute  his  mission  of  mercy  that 
January  1,  1848,  the  sixty  ransomed  ones  were  at  Walla  Walla, 
and  the  next  day  they  started  down  the  river,  and  in  due  time 
Mr.  Ogden  delivered  them  in  safety  at  Oregon  City. 

January  8,  1848,  Rev.  H.  H.  Spalding  wrote  to  D.  Greene, 
secretary,  a  letter  giving  an  account  of  the  massacre  and  the 
rescue  of  the  captives,  and  continued  as  follows  "Too  much 
praise  cannot  be  credited  to  Mr.  Ogden  for  his  timely,  prompt 
and  judicious  and  Christian  efforts  in  our  behalf. 

"We  owe  it  under  kind  heaven  to  the  efforts  of  Mr.  Ogden 
and  Mr.  Douglas  that  we  are  alive  and  at  this  place  to-day. 

"May  the  God  of  Heaven  abundantly  reward  them." 

The  whole  history  of  Indian  massacres  since  the  settlement 
of  America  began  shows  no  other  instance  where  so  many  cap- 
tives were  so  quickly  rescued  with  no  fighting  and  with  no 
overwhelming  military  force  menacing  the  Indians. 

The  Oregon  Spectator,  the  only  paper  then  published  in 
Oregon,  in  its  issue  of  January  20,  1848,  printed  the  following 
letter: 

"Oregon  City,  17  Jan.,  1848. 

"Sir :  I  feel  it  a  duty  as  well  as  a  pleasure  to  tender  you  my 
sincere  thanks  and  the  thanks  of  this  community  for  your  ex- 
ertions in  behalf  of  the  widows  and  orphans  that  were  left  in 
the  hands  of  the  Cayuse  Indians. 

"Their  state  was  a  deplorable  one,  subject  to  the  caprices  of 
savages,  exposed  to  their  insults,  compelled  to  labor  for  them, 
and  remaining  constantly  in  dread  lest  they  should  be  butch- 
ered, as  their  husbands  and  fathers  had  been. 

"From  this  state  I  am  fully  satisfied  we  could  not  relieve 
them. 

"A  small  party  of  Americans  would  have  been  looked  upon 
by  them  with  contempt;  a  large  party  would  have  been  the 
signal  for  a  general  massacre. 

"Your  immediate  departure  from  Vancouver  on  receipt  of 
the  intelligence  from  Wailatpu  enabling  you  to  arrive  at  Walla 
Walla  before  the  news  of  the  American  party  having  started 
from  this  place  reached  them,  together  with  your  influence 
over  the  Indians,  accomplished  the  desirable  object  of  relieving 
the  distressed. 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (f)  FOR  TRUTH.  75 

"Your  exertions  in  behalf  of  the  prisoners  will  no  doubt 
cause  a  feeling  of  pleasure  to  you  through  life,  but  this  does 
not  relieve  them  nor  us  from  obligations  we  are  under  to  you. 

"You  have  also  laid  the  American  government  under  obliga- 
tions to  you,  for  their  citizens  were  the  subjects  of  the  massa- 
cre, and  their  widows  and  orphans  are  the  relieved  ones.  With 
a  sincere  prayer  that  the  widows'  God  and  the  Father  of  the 
Fatherless  may  reward  you  for  your  kindness,  I  have  the  honor 
to  remain,  sir,    Your  obedient  servant, 

"George  Abernethy, 
"Governor  of  Oregon  Territory. 
"To  Peter  Skeen  Ogden,  Esq.,  Chief  Factor  Honorable  Hud- 
son's Bay  Company,  Vancouver." 

For  this  expenditure  of  time  and  labor  and  of  property  paid 
for  the  ransom  of  these  American  citizens  no  bill  was  ever  ren- 
dered by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  either  to  the  National 
Government  or  to  that  of  Oregon,  nor  was  any  payment  ever 
made  to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  by  either  government. 

Second.  Rev.  C.  Eells  and  E.  Walker,  at  their  station, 
165  miles  north  of  Whitman's  station,  did  not  hear  of  the  mas- 
sacre (which  began  November  29,  1847)  till  December  9,  1847. 

They  straightway  sent  an  express  to  Fort  Colvile,  the  nearest 
Hudson's  Bay  Company's  post,  sixty  miles  to  the  north,  and 
John  Lee  Lewes,  chief  factor  in  charge  there,  immediately  re- 
plied, urging  them,  if  it  should  appear  that  they  were  in  any 
danger,  to  "Fly  to  this  establishment  without  delay,  and  I  will 
do  my  best  for  your  protection."  March  15,  1848,  the  situation 
became  so  menacing  at  their  station  that  they  went  to  Colvile, 
and  from  that  time  till  June  1,  both  families,  including  Myron 
and  Edwin,  then  very  small  children,  were  most  hospitably 
entertained  without  charge  at  Fort  Colvile.  Then  a  detach- 
ment from  the  First  Oregon  Rifles  was  sent  to  escort  them  to 
Walla  Walla  and  start  them  down  the  river  to  the  American 
settlements,  nearly  400  miles  to  the  southwest. 

On  leaving  Colvile,  Rev.  C.  Eells  wrote  in  his  journal,  "With 
emotions  which  we  could  not  well  express  for  the  great  kind- 
ness and  invaluable  assistance  of  John  Lee  Lewes,  Esq.,  we 
took  leave  of  that  worthy  gentleman."  (Cf.,  letter  No.  107 
(22  pages  foolscap,  in  the  form  of  a  journal),  from  Rev.  C. 
Eells  to  D.  Greene,  in  Vol.  248,  Am.  Bd.  Correspondence.) 

Silly  as  is  all  this  talk  of  antagonism  between  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Company  and  the  American  Board  missionaries,  rendering 
it  necessary  to  conceal  the  real  object  of  Whitman's  ride  when 
written  by  anybody,  in  view  of  its  total  falsity,  its  silliness  is 
thrown  completely  in  the  shade  when  written  by  the  Rev. 
Myron  Eells,  D.D.,  or  by  his  brother,  Edwin  Eells,  by  the 
shameless   ingratitude  of  this   slanderous   fiction   about   those 


76  REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  {?)  FOR  TRUTH. 

to  whose  humanity  and  kindness  the  families  of  Rev.  E.  Walker 
and  Gushing  Eells  owed  their  lives. 

WHITMAN     PROBABLY    WENT    FIRST    TO     BOSTON     AND    LATE*    TO 
WASHINGTON. 

Our  candid  author  "seeking  for  the  truth  of  history  wher- 
ever it  can  be  found,"  having  carefully  suppressed  all  the  con- 
temporaneous evidence  that  proves  the  "recollections"  of  his 
witnesses  to  be  wholly  incorrect  as  to  the  origin  and  purpose 
of  Whitman's  ride,  calmly  assumes  that  he  went  to  Washington 
before  he  went  to  Boston  (Cf.  pp.  5,  42,  68),  though  no  one  has 
yet  found  a  single  sentence  from  the  pen  of  either  Dr.  Whit- 
man or  his  wife  that  gives  the  least  information  as  to  whether 
he  went  first  to  Boston  or  to  Washington,  nor  has  a  single 
statement  been  found  in  any  contemporaneous  letter,  book  or 
newspaper  on  that  point,  nor  in  any  subsequent  letter,  book  or 
newspaper  till  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story  had  begun 
to  take  shape,  more  than  fifteen  years  after  Whitman's  ride. 

A  visit  to  Washington,  either  before  or  after  his  visit  to 
Boston,  furnishes  not  the  least  proof  that  he  was  seeking  to 
affect  the  political  destinies  of  Oregon  in  any  way,  since  such 
a  visit  was  merely  in  the  direct  line  of  .his  duty  as  a  missionary 
to  the  Oregon  Indians,  all  the  Indians  being  at  that  time  under 
the  charge  of  the  War  Department,  and  not,  as  later,  under 
the  Interior  Department. 

Every  Indian  missionary,  therefore,  returning  from  any 
remote  Indian  tribe,  would  naturally  endeavor,  if  possible,  to 
see  the  Secretary  of  War  (the  only  Cabinet  officer  that  Whit- 
man in  his  letters  claims  to  have  seen,  or  with  whom  he  claims 
to  have  had  any  correspondence),  especially  if,  as  we  know 
from  his  own  letters  was  the  case  with  WThitman,  he  had  a 
plan  to  propose  to  that  officer  to  get  government  aid  for  the 
Indians  under  his  charge.  (Cf.  his  letter  of  May  28,  1843,  m 
Tr.  O.  P.  Assn.  1891,  pp.  178-9,  as  follows :  "J  mean  to  im- 
press upon  the  Secretary  of  War  that  sheep  are  more  important 
to  Oregon's  interest  than  soldiers.  We  want  to  get  sheep  and 
stock  from  government  for  Indians,  instead  of  money  for  their 
lands.  I  have  written  him  on  the  main  interests  of  the  Indian 
country;  but  I  mean  still  to  write  a  private  letter  touching 
some  particular  interests.") 

There  is  no  probability  that  the  date  of  Whitman's  visit  to 
Washington  can  be  determined  with  certainty,  farther  than 
that  he  could  not  possibly  have  been  there  earlier  than  March 
12  to  15,  and  probably  not  before  March  20  to  25,  while  it  is 
altogether  likely  that  he  went  there  somewhere  about  April  10 
or  12,  after  visiting  Boston. 

I  have  spent  no  small  amount  of  time  and  money  trying  to 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH.  77 

trace  his  journey,  with  the  result  that  no  trace  can  be  found  of 
his  whereabouts  between  February  15,  1843,  when,  according 
to  his  own  statement  to  the  Prudential  Committee  of  the 
American  Board,  as  appears  in  their  records,  he  reached  West- 
port,  Mo.,  and  March  28,  1843,  when  he  called  on  the  editor  of 
the  New  York  Tribune. 

Rev.  M.  Eells  says  (Reply,  p  89)  :  "He  was  at  New  York 
March  28,  according  to  a  letter  of  his  now  extant,  which  he 
wrote  from  that  place  to  the  government  in  regard  to  some 
claims  of  W.  H.  Gray  against  the  government." 

So  general  have  I  found  Mr.  Eells'  inaccuracy  that  I  now 
never  accept  any  statement  of  his  without  investigation,  and  in 
this  matter,  after  writing  a  half  dozen  letters,  and  finally 
obtaining  from  the  Indian  Bureau  a  copy  of  this  letter,  I  found 
it  written  not  March  28,  1843,  from  New  York,  but  April  8, 
1843,  fromi  Boston.  It  is  brief  and  absolutely  inconsequential 
as  to  any  point  under  discussion  herein,  and  gives  no  hint  as 
to  his  either  having  been  or  intending  to  go  to  Washington. 

With  the  rivers  frozen  as  they  were  in  that  uncommonly 
severe  winter  of  1842-43,  it  is  absolutely  certain  that  a  poor 
man,  like  Whitman,  provided  in  advance  with  no  relays  oi 
horses,  and  traveling  by  saddle  to  St.  Louis,  and  by  coach  from 
there,  even  if  he  went  first  to  Washington,  could  not  have 
reached  there  till  some  time  late  in  March,  and,  indeed,  Spald- 
ing's first  account,  in  the  Pacific  for  October  19,  1865,  said : 
"He  reached  Washington  last  March,  1843."  But  this  "recol- 
lection" was  promptly  "amended"  so  as  to  place  him  there 
March  2,  as  soon  as  attention  was  called  to  the  fact  that  the 
Twenty-seventh  Congress  expired  by  limitation  March  3,  1843. 
(Cf.  Spalding's  lecture,  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  37,  41  Con.,  3d  Sess., 
p.  21.) 

As  he  must  have  learned  of  the  signing  and  of  the  terms  of 
the  Ashburton  treaty  as  soon  as  he  reached  the  frontier,  and 
of  the  expiration  of  the  Twenty-seventh  Congress  before  leav- 
ing St.  Louis,  no  occasion  existed  for  him  to  hasten  to  Wash- 
ington, even  if  we  suppose  him  conceited  enough  (which  I  do 
not  believe  he  was)  to  suppose  he  could  affect  the  political 
destinies  of  Oregon  by  going  there ;  nor  is  there  the  least 
probability,  if  he  did  seek  to  accomplish  any  political  result  at 
Washington,  that  he  would  deem  it  wise  for  him  to  go  there 
till  after  going  to  Boston,  and  getting  the  decision  of  the 
American  Board  on  the  question  of  whether  or  not  they  would 
rescind  their  destructive  order  of  February,  1842,  and  continue 
the  Southern  branch  of  the  mission  (*.  c,  his  own  and  Spal- 
ding's stations),  whose  discontinuance  in  the  opinion  of  all  the 
missionaries  meant  the  total  destruction  of  the  mission.  (Cf. 
Walker's  letter  of  February  28,  1843,  and  Whitman's  letter  of 


78  REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH. 

April  I,  1847.)  Unless  he  could  secure  the  rescission  of  that 
order,  he — an  utterly  unknown  man — could  only  appear  before 
the  authorities  at  Washington  as  an  unsuccessful  and  discred- 
ited missionary,  whose  six  years'  labors  among  the  Oregon 
Indians  had  been  so  unsatisfactory  that1  his  mission  board  had 
issued  an  order  which  meant  the  total  destruction  of  the 
mission. 

If,  however,  he  could  (as  he  did)  get  that  order  rescinded, 
he  could  go  to  Washington  with  the  prestige  of  a  missionary 
who  had  made  a  brave  winter's  ride  across  the  continent,  and 
secured  the  rescission  of  an  unwise  order  of  his  mission  board. 

This  statement  of  absolutely  indisputable  facts  shows  how 
potent  were  the  reasons  impelling*  him  to  go  first  to  Boston. 
That  this  was  perfectly  well  understood  by  him,  and  was  his 
plan  when  he  left  Oregon, ,  is  certain  from  the  following  pas- 
sages in  his  wife's  two  letters  hereinbefore  quoted  (pp.  15-18 
ante),  and  which,  as  we  have  seen,  our  candid  and  truth-seek- 
ing author  carefully  refrains  from  quoting. 

In  that  of  September  29,  1842,  she  does  not  allude  to  Wash- 
ington at  all,  but  wrote :  "He  wishes  to  reach  Boston  as  early 
as  possible,  so  as  to  make  arrangements  to  return  next  summer 
if  prospered.  The  interests  of  the  missionary  cause  in  this 
country  calls  him  home." 

September  30  she  wrote :  "He  goes  upon  important  business 
as  connected  with  the  missionary  cause,  the  cause  of  Christ  in 
this  land,  which  I  will  leave  for  him  to  explain  when  you  see 
him,  because  I  have  not  time  to  enlarge.  ...  He  has  for 
a  companion  Mr.  Lovejoy,  a  respectable,  intelligent  man  and 
a  lawyer,  but  not  a  Christian,  who  expects  to  accompany  him 
all  the  way  to  Boston,  as  his  friends  are  in  that  region,  and 
perhaps  to  Washington." 

Between  April  8  or  9,  1843,  when  Whitman  left  Boston,  and 
April  20,  when  he  left  Rushville,  N.  Y.,  for  his  return  to 
Oregon,  there  was  ample  time  for  him  to  go  to  Washington, 
which  he  could  then  have  reached  in  a  night  and  a  day  from 
Boston. 

On  p.  42  Dr.  Eells  says  :  "Another  letter  has  been  found  at 
Washington  which  states  what  he  tried  to  do  there  before  he 
went  to  Boston."  This  is  characteristically  disingenuous,  since 
in  that  letter,  and  its  accompanying  draft  of  a  bill  (published 
in  Tr.  Or.  P.  A.,  1891,  pp.  69-78,  and  of  which  I  have  had  a 
manuscript  copy  for  seventeen  years),  there  is  nothing  from 
which  it  can  be  determined  whether  or  not  he  was  in  Wash- 
ington, before  or  after  his  visit  to  Boston.  These  documents, 
written  soon  after  Whitman's  return  to  Oregon,  have  been 
repeatedly  published  by  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Legend,  as 
if  they  were  of  much  importance,  and  proved  that  Whitman 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH.  79 

had  a  great  influence  in  the  Oregon  policy  of  the  government ; 
but  it  is  certain  that  they  did  not  in  the  slightest  degree  influ- 
ence governmental  action,  and  as  they  were  never  printed,  nor 
the  fact  of  their  existence  published  till  nearly  forty  years  after 
Whitman's  death,  it  is  evident  that  they  furnished  no  informa- 
tion to  the  public,  and  could  not  have  influenced  public  opinion 
in  any  way. 

They  can  be  found  in  Nixon's  "How  Marcus  Whitman 
Saved  Oregon"  (pp.  315-332),  and  in  Mowry's  "Marcus  Whit- 
man" (pp.  274-284),  and  the  letter  only  in  Craighead's  "Story 
of  Marcus  Whitman"  (pp.  197-204). 

The  provisions  of  the  proposed  bill  were  so  totally  imprac- 
ticable that  not  only  was  no  one  of  them  ever  enacted  into  law, 
but  so  far  as  can  be  ascertained  no  one  of  them  was  ever  even 
submitted  to  a  committee  of  Congress  for  consideration,  it 
appearing  from  the  endorsement  on  the  document  that  it  was 
received  at  the  War  Department  June  22,  1844,  and  filed,  and 
never  read  again  by  anybody  till  advocates  of  the  Whitman 
Saved  Oregon  story,  in  their  vain  search  for  some  evidence  that 
Whitman  influenced  the  National  policy,  unearthed  these  two 
documents — interesting,  it  is  true,  as  showing  how  unpractical 
and  visionary  were  many  of  Whitman's  plans,  but  furnishing 
not  the  least  support  to  the  theory  that  he  either  informed  the 
public  or  influenced  governmental  action  about  Oregon. 

MR.  EELLS'   MANY  "WITNESSES/"' 

In  my  forthcoming  book  T  shall  discuss  in  some  detail  quite 
a  number  of  the  "numerous  witnesses"  that  Mr.  Eells  relies 
upon  to  prove  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story,  but  having 
m  this  review  shown  how  he  suppresses  and  juggles  with  all 
the  vital  testimony  of  the  witnesses  who  knew  of  their  own 
knowledge  exactly  what  caused  Whitman's  ride,  I  must,  for 
want  of  space,  pass  all  the  other  witnesses  who  from  twenty- 
five  to  forty  years  after  the  event  (during  from  ten  to  twenty 
years  of  which  they  had  been  hearing  the  pleasing  story  that 
Whitman's  ride  was  to  save  Oregon)  thought  they  remembered 
hearing  Whitman  tell  them  the  story,  except  two,  whom  I 
select  because,  first,  it  has  been  possible  for  me  to  apply  to 
them  that  indispensable  requisite  for  arriving  at  the  truth — the 
cross-examination ;  second,  they  were  both  somewhat  prominent 
men ;  third,  not  being  connected  in  any  way  with  the  Oregon 
Mission,  and  never  having  lived  in  Oregon,  they  are  generally 
considered  to  be  thoroughly  disinterested  witnesses,  and,  fourth, 
they  both  furnish  excellent  illustrations  of  the  danger  of  basing 
history  on  memory,  many  years  after  the  event  and  unsupported 
by  contemporaneous  written  records  (especially  when  the  mem- 
ory is  not  of  one's  own  acts,  but  of  conversations  with  others), 


8o  RBV.  DR.  BELLS'  SEARCH  (f)  FOR  TRUTH. 

and  also  of  the  facility  with  which  actions  and  conversations 
are  transferred  in  the  memory  even  of  honest  and  well-mean- 
ing- people,  from  the  real  doers  of  them  to  the  heroes  of  legend- 
ary tales,  especially  when  their  occupations  are  the  same  and 
their  names  much  alike. 


JUDGE     JAMES  OTIS  OF  CHICAGO. 

The  first  is  the  late  James  Otis  of  Chicago  (quoted  in  "Re- 
ply/' P-  75)-  He  first  appeared  as  a  "witness"  in  Rev.  Dr. 
Thomas  Laurie's  article,  in  Missionary  Herald,  September, 
1885,  as  follows:  "If,  now,  Dr.  Whitman  could  rise  from  his 
martyr  grave  and  give  us  his  testimony,  the  matter  would  be 
settled  beyond  dispute,  and  God,  who,  'When  his  people  went 
about  from  nation  to  nation,  suffered  no  man  to  do  them  wrong ; 
yea,  reproved  kings  for  their  sakes,  saying,  "Touch  not  mine 
anointed  ones,  and  do  my  prophets  no  harm,"  '  has  most  won- 
derfully interposed  to  vindicate  the  memory  of  his  servant. 
Soon  after  the  article  appeared  in  the  Herald  for  February,  I 
received  the  following  letter  from  Judge  Jamies  Otis  of  Chi- 
cago: Tn  the  month  of  April,  1843,  Dr.  M.  Whitman  and  my- 
self were  at  the  same  hotel  in  Buffalo,  N.  Y.,  waiting  for  the  ice 
to  leave  the  harbor,  so  that  we  could  take  the  steamboat  for 
Cleveland,  Ohio.  After  some  four  days  we  took  the  stage  for 
Dunkirk  and  thence  went  by  boat  to  Cleveland.  He  was  a  good 
talker  and  a  man  of  great  observation.  He  gave  me  an  account 
of  his  experience  among  the  western  Indians  ;  his  trip  to  Wash- 
ington; his  interview  with  Webster  at  Washington,  who,  he 
said,  listened  with  much  interest  to  his  statements,  and  then  re- 
marked :  "I  want  the  President  and  Cabinet  to  hear  what  you 
have  said  to  me."  They  were  called  together,  and  Dr.  Whitman 
spent  an  evening  with  the  Cabinet,  answering  their  questions 
and  giving  them  his  views  as  to  the  importance  of  Oregon  and 
the  steps  that  needed  to  be  taken  in  order  to  secure  it  for  this 
country.  Our  life  together  at  the  hotel  and  on  the  boat  was 
intensely  interesting.  At  Cleveland  we  were  told  that  the  boat 
would  not  sail  under  ten  hours,  so  Dr.  Whitman  proposed  that 
we  walk  up  town  and  see  something  of  the  city.  A  slight  snow 
had  covered  the  ground,  and  when  we  reached  the  top  of  the 
hill  the  doctor  saw  a  steeple  and  said :  "Let  us  go  to  that  church, 
for  there  is  something  about  a  church  that  always  interests  me." 
We  reached  it  and  walked  along  its  southern  side,  where  the 
sun  had  thawed  the  snow,  and  the  green  grass  had  started  up 
fresh  and  beautiful.  The  doctor  remarked :  "This  green  grass 
by  the  side  of  this  church  is  the  smile  of  the  Lord  on  the  work 
to  be  done  by  its  minister  and  members  for  Christ  in  this  grow- 
ing city."  '  I  quote  this  last  paragraph  lest  any  should  charge 
Judge  Otis  with  lapse  of  memory.    The  man  who  so  distinctly 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH.  81 

remembers  that  scene  at  the  church  in  Cleveland  can  be  trusted 
to  recall  the  words  of  Dr.  Whitman  about  his  visit  to  Wash- 
ington." 

Now,  the  fact  is  that  Mr.  James  Otis  was  never  a  judge, 
nor  even  a  lawyer,  but  a  man  of  very  ordinary  education,  who 
had  accumulated  a  fortune  in  real  estate,  and  had  his  office 
with  his  brother,  L.  B.  Otis,  who  was  a  lawyer,  and  had  been 
a  judge.  As  the  winter  of  1842-3  was  an  uncommonly  severe 
one,  it  was  evident  to  me  that  navigation  was  not  open  on  Lake 
Erie  as  early  as  March  (for  the  real  date  of  this  incident  was 
March,  and  not  April,  as  the  Missionary  Herald  prints  it),  and 
as  Whitman  was  not  given  to  gush,  I  thought  as  soon  as  I 
read  this  that  it  sounded  much  more  like  the  garrulous,  con- 
ceited Dr.  W7hite  than  the  reticent  Dr.  Whitman.  I  therefore 
wrote  to  Mr.  Otis,  asking  him  of  he  had  any  diary  or  letters  or 
other  written  documents  by  which  he  could  determine  certainly 
whether  it  was  1842  or  1843  when  he  met  a  missionary  to  the 
Oregon  Indians  at  Buffalo,  as  stated  in  his  letter  to  Rev.  Dr. 
Laurie.  Under  date  of  Chicago,  April  18,  1887,  he  replied  as 
follows:  "At  the  time  I  wrote  the  communication  to  the  Mis- 
sionary Herald,  I  was  of  the  opinion  that  it  was  in  March,  1843, 
that  I  met  Dr.  Whitman.  Since  then  I  have  found  some  entries 
in  a  memorandum  that  fixes  the  date  1842.  .  .  .  We  were 
together  most  of  the  month  of  March  at  Buffalo  and  that  vicin- 
ity. The  blockade  of  ice  prevented  the  arrival  of  a  steamboat 
to  take  us  to  Cleveland.  ...  It  was  in  January  or  Febru- 
ary that  the  doctor  was  in  Washington.  .  .  .  Have  you 
any  data  to  fix  the  year  that  Whitman  left  Oregon  for  Wash- 
ington, D.  C.  ?  Forty- four  years  is  a  long  time  to  call  up  events 
to  a  certainty  unless  one  has  memorandum  to  refer  to."  This 
letter  furnishes  abundant  proof  of  the  correctness  of  that  last 
sentence,  for,  as  we  shall  see,  Mr.  Otis  never  in  his  life  saw  or 
corresponded  with  Dr.  Whitman ;  and  instead  of  spending 
"most  of  the  month  of  March,"  1842,  with  Dr.  White,  whom 
he  did  meet,  he  could  not  have  spent  more  than  from  March 
17  to  March  23,  even  if  he  started  with  him  from  Havana, 
N.  Y.  (Cf.  p.  1,  Medorem  Crawford's  Journal).  It  also  ap- 
pears from  this  letter  that  he  wrote  "March"  in  his  letter  to  the 
Missionary  Herald,  and  that  they  changed  the  date  to  April,  as 
they  well  knew  that  Whitman  could  not  have  been  in  Buffalo 
in  March,  and  so,  to  have  printed  it  as  written  would  have  fur- 
nished no  "support"  to  the  W'hitman  Saved  Oregon  story.  A 
few  months  later  I  called  on  Mr.  Otis  in  his  office,  and  he  re- 
peated this  to  me  and  asked  me  where  Whitman  was  in  the 
spring  of  1842,  to  which  I  replied  that  he  was  in  Oregon  con- 
tinuously from  the  autumn  of  1836  to  October,  1842,  and  added, 
"you  must  have  met  at  Buffalo  not  Dr.  Marcus  Whitman,  but 
Dr.  Elijah  White,  an  ex-Methodist  missionary  to  the  Oregon 


82  REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH. 

Indians,  who,  in  1842,  went  via  Buffalo  and  Cleveland  to  St. 
Louis,  and  thence  to  Independence,  Mo.,  whence  he  led  to 
Oregon  the  first  large  overland  migration."  Mr.  Otis  also  told 
me  that  he  never  had  seen  nor  corresponded  with  this  Oregon 
Indian  missionary  before  nor  after  this  meeting  with  him  in 
the  spring  of  1842.  Having  looked  the  subject  up  pretty  thor- 
oughly, and  learned  that  following  the  mild  winter  of  1841-2 
navigation  on  Lake  Erie  opened  March  7,  1842,  but  that  (as 
occasionally  happens)  later  in  the  month  (from  March  18  to 
23)  floating  ice  from  the  upper  lakes  driven  by  a  strong  wind 
had  temporarily  blocked  the  harbor  of  Buffalo  against  the  weak 
wooden  craft  then  navigating  the  Great  Lakes,  and  that  March 
18,  Dr.  White  and  Medorem  Crawford  and  three  others  ar- 
rived in  Buffalo,  and  had  precisely  the  experience  that  Otis 
narrates  of  being  detained  several  days,  and  finally  driving  in  a 
wagon  to  Cattaraugus  Creek,  twenty  miles  west  of  Buffalo  and 
outside  the  field  of  floating  ice,  and  there  taking  steamer  for 
Erie  and  Cleveland,  I  wrote  Mr.  Otis  a  courteous  letter,  set- 
ting forth  these  facts,  and  further,  that  as  navigation  after  the 
uncommonly  severe  winter  of  1842-3  did  not  open  on  Lake 
Erie  till  May  6,  1843,  and  as  Whitman  wrote  from  St.  Louis 
May  12,  1843,  an<3,  as  the  world  then  was  he  could  not  have 
gone  from  Buffalo  to  St.  Louis  in  six  days,  it  was  certain  that 
Whitman  did  not  go  via  Buffalo  and  steamer  on  Lake  Erie,  and 
urging  him  to  make  public  a  correction  of  his  evident  error. 
To  this  letter  he  never  replied,  but,  being  a  very  self-opinion- 
ated man  and  an  ardent  supporter  of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.,  and 
like  many  another  rich  old  man,  unwilling  to  admit  that  he  had 
ever  made  a  mistake,  he  continued  to  the  day  of  his  death 
(September  14,  1895) — as  I  know  from  a  legal  friend  who  had 
an  office  in  the  Otis  block — to  repeat  the  story  that  in  March, 
1843,  ne  met  Marcus  Whitman  at  Buffalo,  and  spent  several 
days  with  him  at  a  hotel  there,  and  went  on  a  steamer  with 
him  to  Cleveland,  though  it  is  certain  that  it  was  Dr.  Elijah! 
White  with  whom  he  had  this  experience  in  March,  1842.  My 
legal  friend,  who  was  intimately  acquainted  with  James  Otis 
for  many  years,  said :  "You  could  never  find  evidence  enough1 
to  convince  James  Otis  he  was  wrong  in  any  position  he  had 
ever  publicly  taken."  P.  B.  Whitman,  Dr.  Whitman's  nephew, 
a  boy  of  thirteen,  whom  he  took  back  to  Oregon  in  1843,  wrote 
me  (and  has  written  to  several  other  people),  that  they  left 
Rushville,  April  20,  1843,  and  went  to  Olean  on  the  Alleghany 
River,  and  thence  by  the  Alleghany,  and  Ohio,  and  Mississippi 
Rivers  to  St.  Louis ;  and  while  Perrin  B.  Whitman's  "recollec- 
tions" of  conversations  with  his  uncle  and  other  people  are 
plainly  untrustworthy  from  his  youth,  his  recollection  of  the 
route  over  which  he  himself  went  on  this,  the  first  long  journey 
he  ever  made,  can  be  relied  upon,  especially  as  it  agrees  with 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH.  83 

all  the  other  settled  facts  of  the  matter.  So,  in  spite  of  the 
pious  paean  of  scriptural  quotation  with  which  Dr.  Laurie  in- 
troduced this  "witness/'  it  is  evident  that  "God  had  not  most 
wonderfully  interposed  to  vindicate  the  memory  of  his  serv- 
ant/' by  the  statement  volunteered  by  Mr.  James  Otis. 

DR.   SILAS   REED. 

This  "witness"  also  appeared  first  in  1885,  in  a  long  letter  to 
L.  G.  Tyler,  President  of  William  and  Mary  College,  Vir- 
ginia. This  letter  was  published  in  Vol.  2,  "Letters  and  Times 
of  the  Tylers,"  pages  692-9.  It  is  so  long  that  I  can  only  notice 
part  of  its  errors.  I  have  been  unable  to  learn  just  how  old 
Dr.  Reed  was  when  he  wrote  this,  but  he  was  evidently  a 
pretty  old  man,  and  before  my  attention  was  called  to  it  he  had 
died,  so  that  I  could  not  cross-examine  him  personally,  but  only 
cross-examine  his  statement  by  comparing  it  with  indisputable 
public  documents  and  other  printed  matter  to  which  Dr.  Reed 
had  easy  access,  but  to  which  he  seems  not  to  have  thought  it 
worth  while  to  refer  for  a  moment  to  refresh  and  correct  his 
memory  before  writing  this  long  letter,  full  from  beginning  to 
end  of  errors.     (Page  695)  Dr.  Reed  wrote: 

"I  passed  the  winter  of  1841-2  in  Washington  City.  I  had 
been  appointed  by  President  Tyler  in  the  first  month  of  his 
administration,  April,  1841,  as  Surveyor  General  of  the  States 
of  Illinois  and  Missouri.  Shortly  afterward  Mr.  Tyler  was 
unfortunately  persuaded  by  the  Clay  wing  of  the  Harrison 
and  Tyler  party  to  call  an  extra  session  of  Congress  for  the 
summer  of  1841.  The  Clay  men,  while  I  remained 
at  my  post  in  St.  Louis,  traduced  me  in  the  Senate,  and 
in  August  enforced  my  rejection.  My  pride  of  character  would 
not  submit  to  such  wholesale  murder  by  a  stab  in  the  dark. 
Upon  the  opening  of  the  session  of  the  Senate,  in  December, 
1 84 1,  I  called  upon  that  body,  through  their  Public  Land  Com- 
mittee, to  furnish  me  the  cause  of  my  rejection.  .  .  . 
While  the  Public  Land  Committee  of  the  Senate  were  acting 
.upon  my  case  at  intervals  during  the  winter,  I  took  every  op- 
portunity to  press  upon  the  mind  of  Mr.  Tyler  the  importance 
of  a  government  expedition  to  explore  a  route  across  the  Rocky 
Mountains  to  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  River,  even  if  no 
other  public  benefit  were  gained  than  to  make  known  the  best 
line  of  travel  for  our  emigrants  to  Oregon,  who  in  large  num- 
bers began  to  pick  out  their  way  through  the  mountain  passes 
into  Oregon,  the  previous  year  of  1841.  My  noble  friend, 
Senator  Linn  of  Missouri,  Chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Ter- 
ritories, had  about  that  time  introduced  a  bill  to  organize 
Oregon  into  a  Territory  of  the  United  States.  Colonel  Gilpen, 
afterward  Governor  of  Colorado,  returned  that  winter  from  a 


84  REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  {?)  FOR  TRUTH. 

private  expedition  down  and  up  the  Columbia  River,  and  I 
had  the  extreme  pleasure  of  listening  to  his  eloquent  and  fascin- 
ating descriptions  of  that  country  during  many  interviews  with 
Senators  Linn  and  Breese,  who  were  collecting  material  to  use 
before  the  Senate  in  their  discussion  upon  the  merits  of  the 
bill,  which  almost  the  whole  Senate  treated  with  a  smile  of  im- 
patience and  indifference  whenever  the  subject  was  called  to 
their  attention.  From  Dr.  Whitman,  a  missionary  to  Oregon, 
much  useful  information  for  emigrants  and  the  Senators  who 
had  charge  of  the  bill  was  also  obtained  at  that  time." 

That  Dr.  Reed's  recollection  of  what  winter  it  was 
that  he  was  in  Washington  is  trustworthy  is  evident 
from  his  very  great  personal  interest  in  his  contest 
for  the  very  important  and  lucrative  office  of  Sur- 
veyor General  of  the  two  great  States  of  Missouri 
and  Illinois,  to  which,  he  informs  us  further  on  in  the  letter, 
the  President  renominated  him  "On  the  14th  of  March,  1842, 
and  on  the  17th  I  was  unanimously  confirmed,"  (which  we  find 
verified  by  examination  of  the  Sen.  Ex.  Journal  for  that 
date),  but  that  his  recollections  as  to  the  other  matters  in  this 
quotation  are  wholly  erroneous  I  shall  speedily  demonstrate. 
(1.)  As  to  the  calling  of  that  special  session  of  Congress — 
the  first  session  of  the  twenty-seventh  Congress — Mr.  Tyler  had 
no  more  to  do  with  that  call  than  "the  Man  in  the  Moon." 
Though  it  did  not  assemble  till  after  his  most  untimely  death, 
it  was  called,  not  by  Mr.  Tyler  "shortly  after"  Reed's  appoint- 
ment in  April,  1841,  but  on  March  17,  1841,  by  President  Har- 
rison, a  fact  distinctly  stated  by  President  Tyler  in  his  message 
to  it,  (as  Dr.  Reed  could  have  ascertained  by  five  minutes'  ex- 
amination of  the  Cong.  Globe,  1st  Sess.,  27th  Cong.,  1841,  p.  7, 
or  "Messages  of  the  Presidents,  Vol.  IV.,  p.  21).  Dr.  Reed's 
assertion,  therefore,  that  "Mr.  Tyler  was  unfortunately  per- 
suaded by  the  Clay  wing  of  the  Harrison  and  Tyler  party  to 
call  an  extra  session  of  Congress  for  the  summer  of  1841,"  is 
without  even  a  shadow  of  foundation  in  fact.  . 

(2.)  As  to  the  grotesque  inaccuracy  of  Dr.  Reed's  state- 
ment that  "Almost  the  whole  Senate  treated  Linn's  bill  with  a 
smile  of  indifference  or  impatience,"  it  is  only  necessary  to  re- 
fer the  reader  to  the  Congressional  Globe,  Twenty-seventh 
Congress,  third  session,  for  the  record  of  the  great  debate  on 
that  bill  in  the  Senate,  the  report  of  which  covers  165  columns, 
and  in  which,  of  a  total  membership  of  fifty,  twenty-seven  sen- 
ators took  part. 

(3.)  As  to  "a  large  number  of  emigrants  to  Oregon  in 
1841."  A  letter  of  Mrs.  Whitman,  dated  "Wielatpoo,  Oregon 
Territory,  October  1,  1841,"  and  published  in  Transactions  of 
the  Oregon  Pioneer  Association  for  1891,  pages  139-145,  says 
(p.  139)  :  "The  emigrants  were  twenty- four  in  number — two 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH.  85 

families,  with  small  children,  from  Missouri.  This  company 
was  much  larger  when  they  started.  About  thirty  went  another 
route  to  California.  The  company  of  Jesuits  were  twelve  in 
number." 

These  Catholic  priests  went  from  Fort  Hall  to  the  Flat- 
head country,  in  what  is  now  northwest  Montana,  without 
going  to  Wielatpoo  or  Wialatpu.  That  is,  counting  those  who 
went  to  California,  the  total  overland  migration  to  both  Oregon 
and  California  that  year,  men,  women  and  children,  was  sixty- 
six  persons,  and  to  Oregon,  counting  Catholic  missionaries  and 
all,  only  thirty-six.  Surely  this  is  not  "large  numbers"  for  a 
population  of  15,000,000  to  17,000,000  people  to  send  out.  The 
first  overland  migration  that  can  properly  be  called  large  was 
that  which  went  in  1842,  under  Dr.  White,  which  numbered 
112  persons. 

(4.)  As  to  Colonel  Gilpin  {not  Gilpen,  as  Reed  spells  it), 
Dr.  Reed  writes :  "Colonel  Gilpen,  afterwards  Governor  of 
Colorado,  returned  that  winter  from  a  private  expedition  down 
and  up  the  Columbia  River,  and  I  had  the  extreme  pleasure  of 
listening  to  his  eloquent  and  fascinating  descriptions  of  that 
country  during  many  interviews  with  Senators  Linn  and  Breese, 
who  were  collecting  material  to  use  before  the  Senate  in  their 
discussions  on  the  merits  of  the  bill  "  (i.  e.,  the  bill  for  the  oc- 
cupation Oregon,  W.  I.  M.).  Now,  it  should  be  remembered 
when  considering  these  statements,  that  Gilpin  was  a  very 
prominent  man  in  the  West  for  half  a  century  after  this  winter 
of  1841-42,  and  a  man  whom  Reed  (who  was  Surveyor  General 
of  Missouri  and  Illinois  under  President  Tyler,  and  of  Wyom- 
ing under  General  Grant)  must  have  met  scores  of  times  dur- 
ing his  own  long  residence  in  official  capacities  west  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi, yet  it  is  as  certain  as  that  two  and  two  are  four  that 
all  this  which  Reed  is  so  positive  he  recollects  about  Gilpin  in 
the  winter  of  1841-42  is  totally  false.  Gilpin  did  not  go  to 
Oregon  till  1843,  when  he  accompanied  Fremont's  second  ex- 
ploring expedition,  but  instead  of  continuing  with  Fremont  on 
his  journey  from  the  Dalles  south  along  the  east  base  of  the 
Cascade  Mountains  in  the  late  autumn  of  1843  an,d  the  winter 
of  1843-44,  and  across  the  Sierra  Nevadas  into  the  Sacramento 
Valley,  he  remained  in  Oregon  the  winter  of  1843-44,  and  re- 
turned to  the  States  via  Fort  Hall,  Fort  Bridger  and  Bent's 
Fort  in  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1844. 

Gilpin,  therefore,  was  certainly  never  in  Washington  after 
he  was  "down  and  up  the  Columbia  River"  earlier  than  the 
winter  of  1844-5  (*•  e->  three  years  later  than  Reed  "remem- 
bers" these  many  interviews  with  him  and  "Senator's  Linn  and 
Breese")  (Cf.  on  this  (a)  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  174,  28th  Cong.,  2d 
Sess.,  being  reports  of  Fremont's  first  and  second  exploring 
expeditions.)      Page  107:   "We  were  joined  here"    (i.  e.,  at 


86  REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH. 

Elm  Grove,  in  what  is  now  Kansas,  on  May  31,  1843)  "by 
Mr.  William  Gilpin  of  Missouri,  who,  intending  this  year  to 
visit  the  settlements  in  Oregon,  had  been  invited  to  accompany 
us,  and  proved  a  useful  and  agreeable  addtion  to  the  party." 

Idem.,  page  195,  describing  his  return  to  the  Dalles  from  Ft. 
Vancouver,  under  date  of  November  18,  1843,  Fremont  writes: 
"Early  in  the  afternoon  we  arrived  again  at  the  Dalles.  .  .  . 
My  friend,  Mr.  Gilpin,  had  arrived  in  advance  of  the  party. 
.  .  .  On  the  following  day  he  continued  his  journey  in  our 
returning  boats  to  Vancouver.,, 

(b)  "Chronicles  of  the  Builders  of  the  Commonwealth," 
seven  volumes,  H.  H.  Bancroft,  San  Francisco,  189 1.  Vol.  1, 
pages  506-66,  inclusive,  is  a  biography  of  William  Gilpin,  with 
portrait.  In  1840- 1-2,  instead  of  traveling  "down  and  up  the 
Columbia  River,"  he  was  residing  in  Missouri  (p.  522).  In 
June,  1 843,  he  started  for  Oregon  and  joined  Fremont's  party. 

(P.  528)  :  "On  the  10th  of  April,  1844,  he  left  Fort  Van- 
couver." 

(P.  529)  :  "July  4,  1844,  they  were  at  Soda  Springs  (in  what 
is  now  the  southeastern  part  of  Idaho)  on  their  return  to  the 
States. 

(c)  Gilpin's  testimony  in  the  case  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Company  and  Puget's  Sound  Agricultural  Company  vs.  the 
United  States,  covering  pages  330-339  of  Volume  6  of  that  case 
and  given  at  Washington,  in  February,  1867,  which  states  (p. 
331)  :  "I  visited  and  remained  several  days  at  Fort  Hall,  going 
out  to  the  Pacific  Sea  in  September,  1843,  and  returned  from 
the  Pacific  in  June,  1844,  remaining  at  this  time  several  weeks 
at  the  Fort/'  (P.  332.)  Int.  12:  "How  long  and  when  were 
\ou  at  Walla  Walla?  Answer.  In  October,  1843,  some  eight 
days;  in  April  and  May,  1844,  some  twenty-five  or  thirty 
days."  P.  333.)  Int.  16:  "When  and  how  long  and  under 
what  circumstances  did  you  visit  Fort  Vancouver?"  Answer. 
My  recollection  is  that  I  visited  Vancouver  in  November,  1843  ; 
in  February,  1844,  and  April,  1844.  I  was  there  about  ten 
days  on  each  occasion,  and  on  the  last  two  occasions  was  spe- 
cially the  guest  of  Governor  John  McLoughlin,  and  was  treated 
by  him  with  the  greatest  hospitality  and  kindness." 

(5.)  Furthermore,  as  Senator  Louis  F.  Linn  died  October 
3,  1843,  when  Gilpin  was  with  Fremont's  party  in  the  Snake 
River  Valley,  208  miles  west  of  Fort  Hall  on  the  way  to  and 
about  275  miles  east  of  the  Columbia,  (Cf.  Fremont's  Rept. 
Sen.  Ex.  Doc.,  No.  174,  p.  170),  it  is  absolutely  certain  that 
not  only  is  Dr.  Reed  entirely  mistaken  in  saying  that  in  the 
winter  of  1841-42,  "I  had  the  extreme  pleasure  of  listening  to 
his  eloquent  and  fascinating  description  of  that  country"  (i.  e., 
Oregon)  "during  many  interviews  with  Senators  Linn  and 
Breese,"  but  that  he  never  during  any  other  winter  was  pres- 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH  87 

ent  at  any  interviews  between  Colonel  Gilpin  and  Senator  Linn 
after  Gilpin  visited  Oregon. 

(6.)  "From  Dr.  Whitman,  a  missionary  to  Oregon,  much 
useful  information  for  emigrants  and  the  Senators  who  had 
charge  of  the  bill  was  also  obtained  at  that  time."  All  that 
needs  to  be  observed  as  to  the  falsity  of  this  is  that  "at  that 
time,"  i.  e.,  the  winter  of  1841-42,  Dr.  W'hitman  was  by  the 
traveled  route  more  than  2,500  miles,  or  four  to  five  months' 
journey  from  Washington.  There  can  be  no  doubt  but  what 
the  Oregon  Indian  missionary  whom  Dr.  Reed  saw  in  Wash- 
ington was  Dr.  Elijah  White,  who,  we  know  from  contem- 
porary sources,  was  there  at  that  precise  time,  and  had  inter- 
views with  the  President,  Secretaries  Webster,  Upshur  and 
Spencer,  Senators  Linn  and  Benton  and  other  friends  of 
Oregon. 

(7.)  As  to  Fremont's  exploring  expedition,  I  shall  make 
no  further  criticism  of  the  account  which  Dr.  Reed  gives  of  its 
origin,  (which  want  of  space  forbids  quoting),  than  to  say  that 
it  squarely  contradicts  the  account  that  Senator  Benton  gave 
many  years  ago,  while  Fremont,  and  Colonel  Abert,  and  Presi- 
dent Tyler  were  all  alive,  and  could  have  corrected  it,  if  need- 
ful, to  square  with  what  Reed  thought  he  recollected  about  it  in 
1885,  when  Tyler,  and  Abert,  and  Benton  were  all  dead,  and 
Fremont  employed  in  a  distant  part  of  the  country  where  he 
was  not  likely  to  see  Reed's  letter. 

(Cf.  Vol.  2  of  Benton's  "Thirty  Years'  Views,"  published 
1854-56,  p.  478  et.  seq.,  for  Fremont's  1st  Expedition,  and  p. 
579  for  his  2d  Expedition.) 

But  when  Dr.  Reed  comes  to  speak  of  what  it  accomplished, 
he  is  exceedingly  wide  of  the  mark.  He  says,  "Fremont  made 
ready  to  start  from  St.  Louis  with  his  expedition  as  soon  as 
there  was  green  grass  to  subsist  his  animals  upon,  with  an  out- 
fit of  fifty  to  sixty  men,  after  leaving  Independence,  Mo.,  and 
moved  up  the  Platte  River  and  its  north  branches  to  the  old 
South  Pass,  and  thence  to  the  headwaters  of  the  Snake  (or 
Lewis)  River,  and  down  it  and  the  Columbia  River  to  Astoria, 
thus  avoiding  Mexican  Territory,  but  kept  close  along  its  north- 
ern border  after  he  entered  Oregon  Territory." 

Instead  of  fifty  to  sixty  men  he  had  twenty-six  men  and  Ben- 
ton's son,  a  boy  of  twelve  (Cf.  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  174,  28  Cong., 
2d  Sess.,  pp.  9-10),  and  instead  of  "journeying  to  the  Colum- 
bia" on  this  first  expedition,  Fremont  only  went  to  the  South 
Pass,  and  north  from  there  to  Fremont's  Peak  in  the  Wind 
River  Mountains,  and  thence  back  to  Missouri  by  the  same 
route  he  went  out  on,  and  was  never,  on  that  first  expedition, 
within  700  to  800  miles  of  the  Columbia,  and  not  within  fifty  to 
seventy-five  miles  of  any  tributary  of  the  Lewis  or  Snake  Fork 
of  the  Columbia. 


88      REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH. 

On  his  second  expedition,  instead  of  fifty  to  sixty  men,  his 
party  consisted  of  thirty-nine  men  (Cf.  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  174,  28th 
Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  pp.  105-6),  and  instead  of  "avoiding  Mexi- 
can Territory,"  he,  like  all  the  other  overland  travelers  at  that 
time,  traveled  from  Green  River,  about  125  miles  in  Mexi- 
can Territory  (Cf.,  p.  133  of  his  report,  Doc.  174,  above 
mentioned),  and  then  turned  aside  from  the  route  to  Oregon, 
and  spent  nearly  a  month  more  in  Mexican  Territory,  examin- 
ing the  Great  Salt  Lake  and  the  country  about  it,  and  after  he 
reached  the  Columbia  he  did  not  "go  down  the  Columbia  River 
to  Astoria,"  but  only  as  far  as  Fort  Vancouver,  nearly  100 
miles  up  the  river  from  Astoria,  and  thence  he  journeyed  east 
up  the  river  again  to  the  Dalles,  and  thence  south  on  the  east 
side  of  the  Cascade  and  Sierra  Nevadas,  and  then  west  across 
the  Sierras  to  the  Sacramento  Valley,  as  Dr.  Reed  ought  to 
have  known,  and  certainly  could  have  found  in  an  hour's  ex- 
amination of  Fremont's  Report  hereinbefore  quoted. 

On  page  194  of  the  report  of  his  second  expedition,  under 
date  of  November  8-9,  1843,  after  describing  his  arrival  at 
Fort  Vancouver,  and  his  most  hospitable  reception  by  Dr.  Mc- 
Loughlin,  the  Superintendent  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company's 
affairs  beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains,  he  says,  "In  the  space  of 
two  days  our  preparations  had  been  completed,  and  we  were 
ready  to  set  out  on  our  return.  It  would  have  been  very  grati- 
fying to  have  gone  down  to  the  Pacific,  and,  solely  in  the  in- 
terest and  the  love  of  geography,  to  have  seen  the  ocean  on  the 
western  as  the  eastern  side  of  the  continent,  so  as  to  give  a 
satisfactory  completeness  to  the  geographical  picture  which 
had  been  formed  in  our  minds ;  but  the  rainy  season  had  now 
regularly  set  in,  and  the  air  was  filled  with  fogs  and  rain,  which 
left  no  beauty  in  any  scenery,  and  obstructed  observations. 
The  object  of  my  instructions  had  been  entirely  fulfilled  in  hav- 
ing connected  our  reconnaissance  with  the  surveys  of  Captain 
Wilkes." 

That  Reed  meant  Fremont's  first  expedition  (which  was  in 
1842)  is  evident  from  his  very  next  sentence,  which  is  as  fol- 
lows: 

"The  following  winter,  1842-3,  Dr.  Whitman,  the  Oregon 
missionary,  returned  to  the  East  and  furnished  valuable  data 
about  Oregon  and  the  practicability  of  a  wagon  route  thereto 
across  the  mountains."  This  sentence,  taken  in  connection  with 
what  he  has  said  before  about  Dr.  Whitman  having  been  in 
Washington  in  the  winter  of  1841-42,  shows  that  he  supposed, 
as  late  as  1885,  that  Dr.  Whitman,  having  appeared  before 
Linn  and  Breese  (as  we  know  Dr.  White  did  in  January  and 
February,  1&42),  had  gone  to  Oregon  in  the  summer  of  1842, 
and  returned  in  the  winter  of  1842-43. 

Now,  if  President  Tyler,  Colonel  Gilpin  and  Senator  Linn 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH  89 

were  particular  friends  of  Dr.  Reed,  and  his  memory  played 
such  fantastic  tricks  as  contemporaneous  official  documents  to 
which  he  had  easy  access  (to  wit:  President  Tyler's  1st  mes- 
sage, Fremont's  report,  and  the  Cong.  Globe  for  date  of  Linn's 
death)  prove  it  did,  concerning  such  well  known  and  important 
public  men  and  events,  as  the  calling  of  the  special  session  of 
Congress,  in  1841,  the  extent  of  Fremont's  explorations  in  1842 
and  1843,  tne  time  of  Gilpin's  visit  to  Oregon  and  the  absolute 
impossibility  of  his  ever  having  had  any  interviews  with  Linn 
after  his  visit  to  Oregon,  of  what  conceivable  value  can  that 
memory  be  about  so  little  known  an  individual  as  Dr.  Whitman, 
whom  he  does  not  claim  ever  to  have  seen  after  the  time  he 
thinks  he  saw  him  in  the  winter  of  1841-42,  but  when,  in  fact, 
we  know  that  Dr.  Whitman  was  2,500  miles  distant  from  him, 
or,  as  the  world  then  was,  a  good  125  to  150  days'  journey, 
and  when  it  is  absolutely  certain  from  contemporaneous  docu- 
ments, i.  e.,  "White's  Narrative"  and  Secretary  of  War  Spen- 
cer's letter,  and  White's  appointment  as  Indian  agent,  that  the 
Oregon  missionary  he  really  saw  at  that  time  in  Washington 
was  Dr.  Elijah  White,  and  not  Dr.  Marcus  Whitman? 

Dr.  White,  ex-missionary  to  the  Oregon  Indians,  very  closely 
resembled  in  name  and  occupation  Dr.  Whitman,  missionary  to 
the  Oregon  Indians,  so  that  Dr.  Reed  and,  doubtless,  most  of 
the  other  "numerous  witnesses"  whose  statements,  made  many 
years  after  the  event  and  wholly  unsupported  by  contemporane- 
ous documents,  Rev.  Dr.  Eells  depends  upon  to  sustain  the 
Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story,  could  very  easily  confound  them 
and  transfer  White's  acts  to  Whitman. 

But  there  were  no  other  men  in  the  country  with  names  and 
occupations  so  like  those  of  his  personal  and  intimate  friends, 
President  Tyler,  Colonol  Gilpin,  Lieutenant  Fremont  and 
Senator  Linn,  that  Reed  could  confounti  with  them,  yet 
see  how  egregiously  he  blunders  about  each  of  these 
prominent  public  men,  whose  acts  at  that  time  had  been  in 
print,  in  easily  accessible  books  for  more  than  forty  years, 
when  Reed  wrote  this  letter,  in  which  there  are  many  other 
errors  that  I  have  not  space  to  examine. 

A  very  characteristic  sample  of  Mr.  Eells'  candor  is  seen 
in  his  mention  (Reply,  pp.  in  and  116)  of  the  first  three 
wagons  which  ever  went  through  to  the  Columbia,  in  August 
and  September,  1840,  (an  account  of  which  was  printed  in 
Trans.  O.  P.  Assn.,  for  1877,  p.  22).  These  wagons  had  been 
left  at  Fort  Hall,  not  on  account  of  any  opposition  of  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Company  to  wagons  going  farther,  but  on  account  of 
the  fatigue  of  the  teams  of  their  owners,  in  1839  and  1840. 

Two  of  them  were  owned  by  Robert  Newell,  and  Caleb 
Wilkins  owned  the  third.  Newell  sold  one  of  his  to  Frederic 
Ermatinger  (who  was  the  H.  B.  Co.'s  trader  in  command  of 


go  REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH. 

Ft  Hall  in  1838,  1839,  J^4°  anc^  1^>4I)>  and  though  with  their 
small  number  and  lack  of  tools  for  roadmaking  they  were 
only  able  to  get  through  with  the  running  gear,  that  was 
enough  to  prove  beyond  any  question  that  whenever  a  resolute 
and  tolerably  harmonious  party  of  100  or  more  men,  provided 
with  shovels,  picks  and  axes  should  try  it,  they  could  drive  a 
train  of  loaded  wagons  through  with  no  serious  delay. 

The  simple  fact  that  not  only  were  these  wagons  outfitted  at 
Fort  Hall,  where,  according  to  all  the  advocates  of  the  Whit- 
man Saved  Oregon  story,  there  was  determined  and  continuous 
opposition  to  wagons  going  farther,  but  that  one  of  them  was 
purchased  for  the  journey  by  Ermatinger,  and  by  him  out- 
fitted and  driven  through  to  Walla  Walla,  of  itself,  when  the 
facts  are  honestly  stated,  reduces  to  senseless  drivel  all  the 
scores  of  pages  that  Rev.  M.  Eells  and  the  other  advocates  of 
the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story  have  ever  printed  about  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Company's  opposition  to  wagons  going  beyond 
Fort  Hall. 

It  is  absolutely  certain  that  Mr.  Eells  knows  all  about  these 
wagons,  for  not  only  does  he  have  the  Transactions  of  the 
O.  P.  A.,  but  about  fifteen  years  ago  I  wrote  him  fully  about 
this  precise  thing,  and  in  his  answer  he  did  not  pretend  to  deny 
any  of  the  facts  stated  in  the  account  in  Transactions  of  1877. 

(But  as  the  whole  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  legend  crumbles 
to  dust,  if  there  was  not  constant  opposition  to  wagons  going 
beyond  Fort  Hall,  Mr.  Eells — knowing  well  that  very  few  of 
his  readers  would  ever  know  any  more  about  these  wagons 
than  he  might  choose  to  tell — ingeniously  avoids  not  only  all 
mention  of  Ermatinger's  part  in'  this  work,  but  also  all  mention 
of  the  fact  that  the  wagons  were  outfitted  at  Fort  Hall,  and 
writes  (on  p.  in,  Reply,),  as  follows:  "He"  (i.  e.,  Dr.  Whit- 
man) "knew  .  .  .  that  in  1840,  Dr.  Robert  Newell,  Colonel 
Joseph  L.  Meek  and  two  others  had  taken  three  wagons  to 
Walla  Walla,"  and  (p.  116)  describing  what  he  is  pleased  to 
call  "the  victories"  which  Americans  won  over  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Company  and  its  (purely  imaginary)  opposition  to  Ameri- 
cans going  to  Oregon,  and  especially  to  wagons  going  beyond 
Fort  Hall,  he  writes:  "When  four  years  later"  (*.  e.,  than 
1836)  "Dr.  Robert  Newell  and  company  took  three  wagons  to 
Walla  Walla,  the  enemy  was  again  overcome,"  than  which 
more  preposterous  nonsense  was  never  penned — even  in  sup- 
port of  the  Whitman  legend. 

If  Rev.  M.  Eells  and  the  other  advocates  of  the  Whitman 
Saved  Oregon  story  would  print  even  a  small  part  of  the  corre- 
spondence and  diaries  of  Whitman  and  his  associates,  which 
they  have  carefully  suppressed  for  the  past  thirty-eight  years, 
everybody  reading  it  could  easily  "cross-examine"  most  of  his 
"numerous  witnesses"  by  comparison  of  their  statements  with 


REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH  91 

that  contemporaneous  evidence,  with  results  as  destructive  to 
the  value  of  their  "testimony"  as  appears  from  my  cross-ex- 
amination of  Mr.  James  Otis  and  Dr.  Silas  Reed.  But  as  the 
advocates  of  the  Whitman  legend  will  doubtless  continue  their 
long-pursued  policy  of  suppression,  the  public  is  not  likely  to 
have  a  chance  to  read  the  real  evidence  in  the  matter  till  my 
book  on  "The  Acquisition  of  Oregon  and  the  Long-Suppressed 
Evidence  About  Marcus  Whitman"  appears,  which,  I  trust, 
will  be  before  the  end  of  1904. 

Rev.  Dr.  M.  Eells  asserts  (Reply,  p.  31)  that  the  crediting 
of  the  first  vague  version  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story 
(Cf.,  p.  234,  infra.)  to  the  Sacramento  Bulletin  instead  of  the 
Sacramento  Union  is  "the  only  mistake  made  by  him  in  this 
controversy"  that  has  been  found  by  Professor  Bourne  and 
myself. 

In  this  he  does  himself  altogether  too  much  honor.  It  is  true 
that  it  was  the  only  one  of  his  multitudinous  errors  that  we 
specifically  pointed  out,  because  both  of  us  were  then  hunting 
for  vastly  larger  game  than  Rev.  Dr.  Myron  Eells,  to  wit: 
for  the  authors  of  the  Whitman  .Legend,  and  the  historians  and 
other  writers  of  considerable  note  who  had  been  taken  in  by  it, 
and  had  imposed  it  on  their  readers  as  history. 

But  everything  he  has  ever  published  in  support  of  the  Whit- 
man Saved  Oregon  story  is  as  full  of  blunders,  and  in  every 
was  as  worthless  historically  as  this  "Reply,"  and  surely  "Lan- 
guage cannot  further  go"  than  that  in  its  condemnation. 

Mr.  Eells  (on  pp.  120-22)  quotes  certain  estimates  concern- 
ing Dr.  Whitman,  which,  he  says,  are  "A  fitting  reply  to  Pro- 
fessor Marshall's  statement  that  Dr.  Whitman  was  not  above  a 
third  or  a  fourth  rate  man."  These  estimates  are  from  A.  Mc- 
Kinlay  and  W.  F.  Tolmie,  who  knew  Whitman,  but  both  of 
whom  repudiate  in  toto  the  Saving  Oregon  story,  though  Rev. 
M.  Eells  carefully  refrains  from  so  informing  his  readers; 
From  Judge  O.  C.  Pratt,  who  never  was  in  Oregon  till  more 
than  a  year  after  Whitman's  death ;  from  ex-United  States  Sen- 
ator James  K.  Kelly,  who  was  never  in  Oregon  till  three  and  a 
half  years  after  Whitman's  death;  from  Hon.  W.  Lair  Hill, 
who  was  never  in  Oregon  till  six  years  after  Whitman's  death ; 
and  from  Hon.  Elwood  Evans,  one  of  the  earliest  investigators, 
and,  on  investigation,  opponents,  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon 
story,  and  who  for  some  years  before  1878  had  been  imposed 
upon  by  it.  Whether  he  wrote  this  before  or  after  he  was  con- 
vinced of  the  falsity  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story  does 
not  appear,  as  Mr.  Eells  refrains  from  giving  its  date. 

He  also  quotes  from  the  Oregonian,  but  without  giving  the 
date,  or  the  author  of  the  sentiments  quoted,  and  from  H.  H. 
Bancroft's  "Oregon,"  but  whether  the  opinion  therein  ex- 
pressed was  Bancroft's  or  Mrs.  Victor's  or  that  of  some  one 


92  REV.  DR.  EELLS'  SEARCH  (?)  FOR  TRUTH. 

else  whom  he  hired  to  compile  that  work,  cannot  be  known,  and 
he  concludes  with  a  quotation  from  Professor  Bourne,  as  fol- 
lows: "Marcus  Whitman  was  a  devoted  and  heroic  missionary, 
who  braved  every  hardship  and  imperiled  his  life  for  the  cause 
of  Christian  civilization  in  the  northwest,  and  finally  died  at 
his  post,  a  sacrifice  to  the  cause." 

Concerning  these,  it  only  needs  to  be  said  that  but  one  of 
them,  Professor  Bourne,  had  ever  examined  the  correspondence 
of  Whitman  and  his  associates  at  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  office  in 
Boston,  and  Professor  Bourne's  examination  had  not  then  gone 
thoroughly  enough  into  the  correspondence  after  Whitman's 
ride  to  understand  the  decadence  of  the  mission,  and  the  un- 
wisdom of  Whitman  in  obstinately  remaining  there,  against  the. 
advice  of  McLoughlin,  McKay  and  McKinlay,  for  several  years 
after  every  dictate  of  prudence  and  common  sense  should  ha,ve 
caused  him  to  at  least  temporarily  leave,  and  remain  away  "till 
the  hearts  of  the  Indians  should  be  better  towards  him,"  when 
he  doubtless  would  have  been  invited  by  them  to  return,  and 
might  have  finished  his  life  among  them  in  peace,  and  died 
there  of  old  age. 

When  the  facts  are  published  it  will  be  evident  to  all  that 
instead  of  "dying  at  his  post  a  sacrifice  to  the  cause,"  the  dread- 
ful massacre  in  which  not  only  his  own  life  and  that  of  his  wife, 
but  the  lives  of  twelve  others  were  lost,  and  fifty-three  others, 
mostly  women  and  children,  subjected  to  the  brutality  of  their 
savage  captors,  and  from  which  resulted  all  the  expenditure  of 
life  and  property  of  the  Cayuse  war,  was  the  direct  result  of 
his  extreme  obstinacy  and  unwisdom,  and  indisposition  to  follow 
the  advice  of  his  warm  friends,  McLoughlin,  McKinlay  and 
McKay,  who  knew  the  Indian  character  better  before  he 
thought  of  going  missionarying  to  Oregon,  than  he  himself 
ever  did,  and  but  for  whose  interposition  in  his  behalf,  the 
Indians  would  have  killed  him  or  driven  him  away  as  early  as 
October,  1841. 

Before  I  studied  the  correspondence  of  Whitman  and  his  as- 
sociates, in  1887  to  1897,  I  wrote  just  as  strongly  in  com- 
mendation of  him — even  for  two  and  a  half  years  after  I  first 
publicly  demonstrated  in  my  Peabody  Institute  Lectures,  in 
Baltimore,  the  falsity  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  story — 
as  these  people  have  done  who  never  have  read  that  corre- 
spondence. When  the  public  have  a  chance  to  read  that  long- 
concealed  evidence,  I  shall  be  perfectly  content  to  abide  by  their 
decision  as  to  the  correctness  of  my  estimate  of  the  rank  which 
ought  to  be  assigned  to  Marcus  Whitman. 


AMERICAN  HISTORICAL  ASSOCIATION, 


MARCUS    WHITMAN 


A    DISCUSSION   OF   PROF.    BOURNE'S  PAPER 


WILLIAM   I.  MARSHALL. 


(From  (he  Annual  Report  of  the  American  Historical  Association  for  1900, 
Vol.  I,  pages  219-236.) 


WASHINGTON  : 

GOVERNMENT     PRINTING    OFFICE. 

1901. 


MARCUS  WHITMAN:    A  DISCUSSION  OF  PROFESSOR  BOURNE'S 

PAPER.1 


By  Principal  William  I.  Marshall,  of  Chicago. 


From  1877  to  1882 1  supposed  the ' '  Whitman  saved  Oregon  " 
story  to  be  true,  and  as  a  lecturer,  with  illustrations,  on  Yellow- 
stone National  Park,  gold  mines  and  gold  mining,  California, 
Utah  and  the  Mormon  question,  Colorado,  the  new  West,  and 
other  subjects  pertaining  to  the  scenery,  industries,  and  his 
tory  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  and  Pacific  coast  regions,  appear- 
ing in  the  leading  popular  lecture  courses  from  Maine  to  Cali- 
fornia, from  1875  to  1887,  it  would  have  been  worth  many 
thousands  of  dollars  to  me,  if  true,  as  the  basis  of  two  popular 
lectures  on  "Where  rolls  the  Oregon,"  while,  if  not  true,  I 
saw  with  equal  clearness  that  no  lectures  could  be  prepared 
on  far-away  Oregon  which  would  pay  a  dollar  of  profit  in  this 
generation. 

It  was  while  searching  for  evidence  that  would  support  the 
story,  so  that  it  would  be  safe  for  me  to  risk  my  reputation 
in  advocating  it,  that  I  went  to  Oregon  in  1882  and  made  a 
pilgrimage  to  Whitman's  grave,  and  learned,  to  my  great 
regret,  from  the  late  M.  P.  Deady,  long  United  States  circuit 
judge  in  Oregon,  that  there  was  no  real  evidence  to  support 
it,  and  that  the  tale  was,  to  use  his  own  words,  "merely  one 
of  old  Gray's  yarns."  Hoping  that  1  might  save  something 
from  the  ruins  of  it  for  use  on  the  lecture  platform,  I  con- 
tinued its  study  till  1884,  and  then  announced,  in  a  lecture  in 
the  great  Peabody  Institute  course,  in  Baltimore,  Md.,  that 
' '  Whitman's  ride,  though  a  brave  deed,  had  nothing  whatever 
to  do  with  saving  any  part  of  Oregon,  had  no  political  pur- 
pose nor  result,  but  was  undertaken  solely  on  missionary 

1  Prof.  E.  G.  Bourne's  paper,  read  at  meeting  of  American  Historical  Association,  Decem- 
ber 28,  1900,  is  pnblished  in  the  American  Historical  Review,  Jannary,  1901. 

221 


222  AMBBICAfl    HISTORICAL    ASSOCIATION. 

business,  and  if  Marcus  Whitman  had  never  been  born  our 
line  would  have  been  49  degrees  to  the  Pacific,  precisely  as  it 
is  to-day." 

The  late  Hon.  George  Bancroft,  the  historian,  and  the  final 
authority  on  the  Oregon  question,  did  me  the  honor  to  read 
the  manuscript  of  that  lecture,  and  wrote  me,  September  17, 
1885,  as  follows:  "Your  argument  is  conclusive  on  the  ques- 
tion you  discuss." 

Having  for  the  last  sixteen  years  been  a  solitary  voice  on 
this  side  the  Rocky  Mountains  crying  out  against  this  histor- 
ical fabrication,  it  is  with  the  greatest  interest  that  I  have 
listened  to  the  very  admirable  paper  of  Professor  Bourne. 

As  far  back  as  1888,  foreseeing  that  unless  its  falsity  was 
thoroughly  exposed  it  would  soon  be  in  the  school  histories,  I 
wrote  to  the  then  president  of  this  association,  offering  to  read 
a  paper  on  it,  but  nothing  came  of  it. 

Had  it  then  been  taken  up  by  the  association,  it  would  never 
have  been  in  a  single  school  history,  nor  in  any  other  book 
having  any  extensive  circulation,  and  such  a  totally  worthless 
book  as  Barrows's  "  Oregon  "  would  long  since  have  been  with- 
drawn from  sale,  instead  of  being  pushed  into  every  library 
to  befog  and  mislead  the  American  people  about  the  true  his- 
tory of  the  acquisition  of  nearly  one-twelfth  of  all  our  national 
domain  on  this  continent. 

Professor  Bourne  does  not  do  full  justice  to  Rev.  William 
Barrows's  special  qualifications  for  and  very  peculiar  methods 
as  the  historian  of  "Oregon."  The  fact  is  that  for  six  years 
just  before  "throwing  together"  his  Oregon— for  it  was 
never  in  any  proper  sense  written — he  had  his  office  as  secre- 
tary of  the  Massachusetts  Home  Missionary  Society  in  the 
same  building  as  the  American  Board  of  Commissioners  for 
Foreign  Missions — i.  e.,  in  the  one  building  in  this  whole 
world  which  contains,  in  the  files  of  the  Missionary  Herald 
from  1835  to  1848,  and  in  something  like  4,000  pages  of  the 
unpublished  contemporaneous  letters  from  Dr.  Whitman  and 
his  associates  in  the  Oregon  mission,  the  indisputable  evidence 
that  utterly  annihilates  every  proposition  that  Barrows 
advances  as  to  the  origin  and  purpose  of  Whitman's  ride,  and 
not  only  did  he,  as  Professor  Bourne  well  says,  "resist  the 
temptation  to  quote  one  word  of  it,"  but  he  never  intimated 


MARCUS    WHITMAN.  223 

in  his  book  that  a  particle  of  evidence  on  the  question  existed 
there,  though  it  seems  certain  that  he  must  have  known  of  its 
existence. 

The  notion  that  the  title  to  Oregon  could  be  in  any  way 
affected  by  an  influx  of  English  settlers  is  as  purely  imaginary 
as  all  the  rest  of  the  Whitman  legend,  since  the  treaties  of 
1818  and  1 827  specifically  guarded  against  any  possibility  of 
such  a  result.  (Cf.  (a)  Gallatin  to  Clay,  Sec.  of  State,  Nov. 
25,  1826,  Am.  State  Papers,  Foreign  Relations,  Vol.  VI,  p. 
653;  (h)  Edward  Everett  to  Upshur,  Sec.  of  State,  two  dis- 
patches, No.  18,  date  Nov.  14,  1843,  and  No.  19,  date  Dec.  2, 
1843,  in  Berlin  Arbitration,  pp.  29  and  32;  (c)  Calhoun,  Sec. 
of  State,  to  Pakenham,  Br.  minister  at  Washington,  Sept.  2, 
1844;  (d)  Buchanan,  Sec.  of  State,  to  Pakenham,  July  12, 
1845,  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  No.  2,  29th  Cong.,  1st  sess. ;  also  discus- 
sions on  Oregon  in  "Debates  in  Congress"  and  "Congres- 
sional Globe,"  sessions  of  1824-25, 1828-29, 1838-39, 1842-43, 
1843-44, 1844-45,  and  1845-46,  and  especially  at  the  last  session 
two  speeches  of  John  Q.  Adams,  Feb.  9  and  Apr.  13,  1846.) 

No  claim  was  ever  made  by  any  British  plenipotentiary  in 
all  our  protracted  negotiations  on  the  Oregon  question  that 
the  British  title  had  been  or  could  be  strengthened  by  any 
settlement  formed  subsequent  to  the  date  of  the  first  of  these 
treaties,  viz,  October  20,  1818. 

Instead  of  ignorance  and  indifference  about  Oregon  in  the 
United  States,  there  had  been  for  twenty  years  before  Whit- 
man's ride  a  widespread  interest  in  it,  and  about  no  other  ter- 
ritorial acquisition  we  have  ever  made  on  this  continent  had 
there  been  before  its  accomplishment  anywhere  nearly  so 
much  information  printed  by  the  Government  nor  so  many 
popular  books  and  magazine  articles  widely  circulated  among 
the  people  as  about  Oregon  before  1843.  < 

Of  these  books  six  were  immediately  republished  in  England, 
viz:  (1)  Corporal  Patrick  Gass's  Journal  of  the  Lewis  and 
Clark  Expedition,  1808.  (Of  this  also  a  French  edition  was 
printed  in  1810.)  (2)  Lewis  and  Clark's  History  of  the  Expe- 
dition (1814),  Philadelphia,  2  volumes;  London  (1814),  1  vol- 
ume; London  (1815),  3  volumes;  London  (1817),  3  volumes. 
In  1815  it  was  also  translated  into  German  and  published  in 
Germany,  and  in  1816-1818  into  Dutch  and  publshed  in  Dor- 
drecht   (in   3  volumes),  and   in   1817  a  two-volume  edition 


224  AMERICAN    HISTORICAL   ASSOCIATION. 

appeared  in  Dublin.  (3)  Irving's  Astoria  (1836).  (4)  Irving's 
Bonneville  (1837).  (5)  John  K.  Townsend's  Narrative  (1838), 
and  (6)  Greenhow's  History  of  Oregon  and  California,  first 
or  Government  edition  (1840). 

Within  four  and  a  half  years  before  Whitman  reached  the 
States  Congress  had  printed  for  gratuitous  circulation  between 
2,500,000  and  3,000,000  pages  of  five  unanimous  reports  of 
committees  of  the  Senate  and  the  House  of  Representatives 
on  Oregon,  all  unanimously  adopted  by  the  Senate  or  House 
and  all  very  eulogistic  of  the  value  of  Oregon. 

Its  easy  accessibility  by  wagons  via  the  upper  Missouri 
route  and  over  Clark's  (or  Gibbon's)  Pass  had  been  printed 
in  all  the  various  editions  of  Lewis  and  Clark's  History  of 
the  Expedition,  and  had  also  been  declared  via  the  South  Pass 
route  by  the  Rocky  Mountain  Fur  Company  and  by  Major 
Pilcher,  and  published  far  and  wide  by  the  National  Govern- 
ment in  Senate  Executive  Document  No.  39,  Twenty -first  Con- 
gress, second  session,  January  25,  1831,  five  years  before 
Whitman  went  to  Oregon  and  more  than  two  years  before 
any  missionary  even  thought  of  going  there. 

This  document  was  widely  copied  in  newspapers  and  maga- 
zines, and  the  same  facts  were  briefly  stated  in  four  popular 
works  on  geography  published  between  1831  and  1835. 

Two  letters  which  Mrs.  Whitman  wrote  while  her  husband 
was  getting  ready  to  go  to  the  States — i.  e.,  September  29  and 
September  30,  1842 — the  first  to  her  brother  and  sister  at 
Quincy,  111.,  and  the  second  to  her  parents  and  brothers  and 
sisters  at  Angelica,  N.  Y.  (and  which  were  never  printed 
till  1893),  seem  to  have  escaped  Professor  Bourne's  eye. 

They  are  in  Transactions  Oregon  Pioneer  Association  for 
1893,  pages  165-169.  The  following  is  all  there  is  in  them  as 
to  cause  of  that  braVe  winter's  ride. 

In  the  first  she  wrote: 

My  Dear  Jane  and  Edward:  I  sit  down  to  write  you,  but  in  great  haste. 
My  beloved  husband  has  about  concluded  to  start  next  Monday  to  go  to 
the  United  States,  the  dear  land  of  our  birth  but  I  remain  behind. 

If  you  are  still  in  Quincy,  you  may  not  see  him  until  his  return,  as  his 
business  requires  great  haste. 

He  wishes  to  reach  Boston  as  early  as  possible,  so  as  to  make  arrange- 
ments to  return  next  summer  if  prospered.  The  interests  of  the  mission- 
ary cause  in  this  country  calls  him  home. 


MARCUS   WHITMAN.  225 

In  the  second  she  wrote: 

My  Beloved  Parents,  Brothers,  and  Sisters:  You  will  be  surprised  if 
this  letter  reaches  you  to  learn  that  the  bearer  is  my  dear  husband,  and 
that  you  will  after  a  few  days  have  the  pleasure  of  seeing  him.  May  you 
have  a  joyful  meeting.  He  goes  upon  important  business  as  connected 
with  the  missionary  cause,  the  cause  of  Christ  in  this  land,  which  I  will 
leave  for  him  to  explain  when  you  see  him,  because  I  have  not  time  to 
enlarge. 

He  has  but  yesterday  fully  made  up  his  mind  to  go,  and  he  wishes  to 
start  Monday,  and  this  is  Friday.  *  *  *  He  has  for  a  companion  Mr. 
Lovejoy,  a  respectable,  intelligent  man  and  a  lawyer,  but  not  a  Christian, 
who  expects  to  accompany  him  all  the  way  to  Boston,  as  his  friends  are  in 
that  region,  and  perhaps  to  Washington.  *  *  *  He  goes  with  the  ad- 
vice and  entire  confidence  of  his  brethren  in  the  mission,  and  who  value 
him  not  only  as  an  associate,  but  as  their  physician,  and  feel  as  much  as  I 
do  that  they  know  not  how  to  spare  him ;  but  the  interest  of  the  cause 
deo  umds  the  sacrifice  on  our  part,  and  could  you  know  all  the  circum- 
stances in  the  case  you  would  see  more  clearly  how  much  our  hearts  are 
identified  in  the  salvation  of  the  Indians  and  the  interests  of  the  cause 
generally  in  this  country. 

The  Red  River  settlers— twenty-three  families,  or  eighty 
persons  in  all — men,  women,  and  children,  the  announcement 
of  whose  coming  in  October,  1842,  according  to  the  "Saving 
Oregon  "  legend,  started  Whitman  to  ride  post  haste  to  Wash- 
ington to  inform  the  Government  and  "  Save  Oregon,"  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  had  been  quietly  settled  in  Oregon  a  year  when 
Whitman  started  to  ride  to  the  States,  having  been  at  Fort 
Walla  Walla,  25  miles  from  Whitman's  station,  October  4, 1841, 
and  Whitman  knew  of  it  within  twenty-four  hours,  as  his  own 
letter  of  November  11,  1841,  states  distinctly  (in  a  part  which  I 
have  not  space  to  quote),  and  instead  of  rushing  across  the  con- 
tinent to  impart  the  information  to  the  Government  at  Washing- 
ton, or  even  hastening  to  write  to  the  Government  or  anybody 
else  about  it,  in  a  two  and  one-half -page  letter  which  he  wrote 
October  22,  1841,  eighteen  da}^s  after  he  certainly  knew  that 
they  had  arrived,  he  did  not  write  one  word  about  them. 
Between  the  time  he  knew,  not  that  they  were  coming,  but 
that  they  had  arrived,  i.  e.,  October  4,  1841,  and  October  3, 
1842,  when  he  started  to  the  States,  he  and  his  wife  wrote  at 
least  six  letters  to  the  States  (which  1  have  read),  aggregating 
about  12,000  words,  out  of  which,  in  a  twenty-two-page  letter, 
written  November  11,  1841  (i.  e.,  thirty-eight  days  after  he 
knew  they  had  arrived),  he,  in  illustration  of  something  of 

H.  Doc.  548,  pt  1 15 


226  AMERICAN   HISTORICAL    ASSOCIATION. 

vastly  more  consequence  to  himself,  devoted  the  whole  of 
thirty  words  to  the  bare  announcement  of  their  arrival,  but  • 
without  a  word  of  comment  on  it,  as  follows: 

(A  large  party  of  settlers,  as  half  servants  to  the  company,  were  at  that 
time  at  the  fort  on  their  way  from  the  Red  River  to  settle  on  the  Cowlitz.) 

"Merely  this  and  nothing  more;"  and  to  show  how  unim- 
portant it  was  to  him,  he  put  these  thirty  words  in  parentheses. 

Rev.  II.  H.  Spalding's  almost  innumerable  erroneous  state- 
ments about  this  matter  it  is  charitable  to  ascribe  to  a  disor- 
dered mind  and  not  to  the  intention  of  misrepresentation, 
although  in  the  record  of  the  continuous  quarrel  between  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Whitman  and  Spalding,  which  began  before  they 
left  the  States  (and  of  which  there  had  been  certainly  seven 
and  probably  eight  or  more  reconciliations  before  they 
received,  on  September  15,  1842,  the  destructive  order  of  the 
American  board,  dated  February  25-26,  1842,  which  ordered 
the  discontinuance  of  three  of  the  four  stations  of  the  missions 
(including  Whitman's),  and  ordered  Gray  and  Spalding — i.  e., 
two  out  of  the  five  men  then  remaining  associated  with  the 
mission — to  return  to  the  States,  which  was  what  caused  Whit- 
man's ride),  Spalding  was  repeatedly  charged  by  his  associates 
with  "  duplicity." 

The  prudential  committee  of  the  American  board,  when 
they  made  that  destructive  order,  had  before  it  letters  aggre- 
gating more  than  130  pages  from  W.  H.  Gray,  Dr.  Whitman, 
Rev.  C.  Eells,  Rev.  A.  B.  Smith,  and  Cornelius  Rogers, 
largely  filled  with  complaints  against  Spalding,  and  among 
them  one  from  Rev.  A.  B.  Smith,  of  14  pages,  dated  Septem- 
ber 28, 1840,  in  which,  after  bitter  complaints  about  Spalding, 
he  goes  on  as  follows: 

I  would  recommend  that  Mr.  Spalding  be  recalled  to  the  States  and  dis- 
missed from  the  service  of  the  board  without  bringing  him  to  any  trial 
respecting  his  conduct  here.  From  what  I  have  seen  and  know  of  him  I 
greatly  fear  that  themian  will  become  deranged  should  any  heavy  calamity 
befall  him.  These  remarks  I  have  just  read  to  Dr.  Whitman  [who,  it 
must  be  remembered,  was  an  M.  D.,  and  not  a  preacher],  and  he  concurs 
in  what  I  have  written,  and  says,  moreover,  that  Mr.  Spalding  has  a  disease 
in  his  head,  which  may  result  in  derangement,  especially  if  excited  by 
external  circumstances. 

His  narrow  escape  at  the  time  of  the  Whitman  massacre  in 
1847  supplied  the  sufficient  exciting  cause,  and  it  is  onr*r 
charitable  to  believe  him  irresponsible  after  that  time. 

Most  legends  are  not  born,  but  simply  grow,  and  their  be- 
ginnings and  authors  can  not  be  precisely  determined,  but 


MARCUS   WHITMAN.  227 

one  of  the  very  many  peculiar  features  of  the  "Whitman 
saved  Oregon"  legend  is  that  it  appeared  full  grown,  and  we 
not  only  know  its  author,  but  the  very  date  and  place  of  its 
first  appearance.  $  Twenty-three  years  after  the  event  the 
Pacific,  the  California  organ  of  the  Congregationalists,  begin- 
ning May  25  and  ending  November  9, 1865,  printed  11  articles, 
by  Rev.  H.  H.  Spalding,  on  the  Oregon  Indian  missions. 
They  were  full  of  misstatements,  which  can  only  be  pardoned 
on  the  ground  of  his  mental  condition,  and  in  the  tenth  and 
eleventh  of  these  articles,  October  19  and  November  9,  1865, 
appeared  full  grown  the  Whitman-saved-Oregon  tale,  exactly 
as  stated  in  what  purports  to  be  an  extract  from  a  lecture  by 
H.  H.  Spalding,  on  pages  20-23  of  Senate  Executive  Docu- 
ment No.  37,  Forty-first  Congress,  third  session. 

Not  the  slightest  trace  of  it  is  to  be  found  in  all  the  hun- 
dreds of  pages  of  the  correspondence  with  the  American  board, 
/between  1843  and  1865,  of  those  who  invented  and  pushed  it 
into  circulation,  viz:  Rev.  H.  H.  Spalding,  W.  H.  Gray,  Rev. 
C.  Eells,  and  Rev.  G.  H.  Atkinson.  They  sometimes  wrote  of 
Whitman  as  a  martyr  but  never  as  an  heroic  patriot. 

The  special  temptation  to  fabricate  it,  then,  is  to  be  found  in 
the  fact  that,  under  the  treaty  of  July  1,  1863,  for  referring 
to  a  commission  their  claims  against  the  United  States  Gov- 
ernment (aggregating  more  than  15,000,000),  the  Hudson 
Bay  Company  and  the  Puget  Sound  Agricultural  Company 
had  begun  in  the  spring  of  1865  to  take  testimony  on  the  case 
(which  was  finally  settled  by  an  award,  September  24,  1869,  of 
$650,000  to  the  two  companies),  and  it  angered  Spalding 
to  think  that  there  was  a  chance  of  their  getting  a  large  part 
of  that  sum,  while  the  American  board  had  not  received  a 
cent  on  its  extravagant  claim  of  $40,000  for  the  destruction 
of  the  missions  at  the  time  of  the  Whitman  massacre,  and 
were  having  great  trouble  in  securing  their  claims  to  a  square 
mile  of  land  at  each  of  the  mission  stations. 

I  can  not  agree  with  Professor  Bourne  as  to  Rev.  C.  Eells. 
He  knew  all  about  the  quarrels  which  had  disturbed  the  mis- 
sion from  its  start.  As  his  letter  of  March  1,  1842,  states 
at  the  annual  meeting  of  1841  (when  certainly  the  sixth,  if 
not  the  seventh,  reconciliation  was  made),  he  had  "sat  from 
six  to  eight  hours,  with  few  minutes'  cessation,  acting  the 
part  of  a  third  person  between  the  parties,  and  fondly  hoped 
that  a  settlement  was  made  which  would  be  permanent,  but 


228  AMERICAN    HISTORICAL    ASSOCIATION. 

have  since  been  distressed  to  learn  that  if  a  bar  was  at  that 
time  put  up  it  has  since  been  let  down."  Three  months  after 
writing  this  letter  he  was  scribe  of  the  seventh  annual  meet- 
ing of  the  mission,  May  16  to  June  8, 1842,  when  the  seventh 
or  eighth  reconciliation  was  had,  which  occupied  all  the  time 
of  the  meeting  for  eight  days;  and  less  than  four  months 
later  he  was  again  scribe  of  that  special  meeting,  September 
26  and  27,  1842,  which,  after  two  days  of  indecision  as  to 
what  action  to  take  on  the  order  of  the  American  board,  dis- 
continuing three  of  the  four  stations,  finally  authorized  Whit- 
man to  go  to  the  States,  not  on  any  political  errand,  but,  as 
the  only  document  he  took  with  him  from  the  three  men  who 
remained  associated  with  him  in  the  mission  distinctly  de- 
clared, uto  confer  with  the  committee  of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M. 
in  regard  to  the  interest  of  this  mission;"  and  when  in  his 
letter  of  May  28,  1866,  he  first  indorsed  the  saving  Oregon 
tale,  and  wrote  that  Whitman  called  that  special  meeting  of 
September  26-27,  1842,  to  consider  a  long-formed  purpose  to 
go  to  the  States  to  save  Oregon,  and  that  they  discussed  it  for 
two  days,  and  that  "  according  to  the  understanding  of  the 
members  of  the  mission,  the  single  object  of  Dr.  Whitman  in 
attempting  to  cross  the  continent  in  the  winter  of  1842-43 
was  to  make  a  desperate  effort  to  save  this  country  to  the 
United  States,"  he  stated  what  was  absolutely  and  unqualifiedly 
untrue. 

Ben:  Perley  Poore,  soon  after  the  article  appeared  in  the 
Atlantic,  in  reply  to  my  letter  of  inquiry,  wrote  that  he  had 
no  personal  knowledge  of  the  matter,  but  had  depended  on 
Spalding's  and  Atkinson's  statements. 

As  to  the  school  histories:  It  is  now  not  quite  two  years  since 
I  decided  that  the  most  practical  and  valuable  piece  of  histor- 
ical work  that  one  of  my  limited  ability  could  accomplish 
would  be  to  drive  this  stoiy  from  our  schoolbooks,  and  to 
keep  it  from  gaining  admission  where  not  already  in,  and,  as 
may  be  seen  from  the  following  letters,  that  task  is  practically 
accomplished  with  the  leading  ones,  as  soon  as  they  can  be 
revised,  and  other  authors  will  within  the  next  six  months 
no  doubt  follow  the  example.  McLaughlin's,  Channing's, 
Fiske's,  Eggleston's,  Ellis's  and  Barnes's  school  histories  have 
never  mentioned  the  tale,  and  Dr.  Eggleston,  in  a  courteous 
reply  to  my  letter  calling  attention  to  a  few  little  errors  on 


MAKCUS   WHITMAN.  229 

other  matters,  and  congratulating  him  that  he  had  not  been 
misled  by  the  Whitman  legend,  after  thanking  me  for  my 
corrections,  wrote: 

Having  been  a  professional  student  of  American  history  from  original 
sources  for  twenty  years,  I  did  not  need  to  be  warned  against  such  a  fake 
as  the  Whitman  saved  Oregon  fable,  which  I  am  every  now  and  then 
entreated  to  insert. 

Principal  W.  F.  Gordy  wrote  me  early  in  the  summer  of 
1899: 

I  am  entirely  satisfied  of  the  correctness  of  your  position,  and  that  you 
are  doing  a  great  work  for  the  truth  of  history.  *  *  *  The  next  edition 
of  my  school  history  will  not  contain  the  name  of  Marcus  Whitman. 

And  the  edition  whose  preface  is  dated  September,  1899, 
does  not. 

Mrs.  A.  H.  Burton  wrote  me  on  October  20,  1900,  as 
follows: 

I  shall  hereafter  exercise  more  care  in  my  methods  from  having  observed 
the  inexhaustible  patience  exercised  by  you  in  sifting  out  the  truth.  1 
have  ordered  the  elimination  of  the  name  of  Whitman  from  my  history. 

Though  Prof.  John  Fiske  had  never  mentioned  Whitman 
in  his  books,  I  knew  that  he  had  in  an  address  at  Astoria,  in 
1892,  and  therefore  sent  him  the  same  manuscripts  as  Princi- 
pal Gordy,  and  on  July  26,  1900,  he  wrote  me  as  follows: 

I  have  read  the  greater  part  of  your  manuscripts  with  care,  and  it  seems 
to  me  that  you  have  completely  proved  your  case.  You  have  entirely 
demolished  the  Whitman  delusion,  and  by  so  doing  have  made  yourself  a 
public  benefactor.  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  I  was  taken  in  by  Barrows  and 
Gray,  and  supposed  what  they  said  about  Whitman  to  be  true.  In  1892 
I  was  invited  to  deliver  the  centennial  oration  at  Astoria  in  commemora- 
tion of  the  discovery  of  the  Columbia  River.  My  acquaintance  with  the 
history  of  Oregon  was  then  but  slight.  I  was  familiar  with  the  history  of 
American  discovery  along  our  northwest  coast,  having  studied  that  subject 
in  the  original  sources,  so  that  part  of  my  oration  was  all  right;  but  when 
I  came  to  the  events  of  fifty  years  ago,  having  no  first-hand  acquaintance 
with  the  sources,  I  trusted  to  Barrows  and  Gray,  and  accordingly  gave  my 
audience  a  dose  of  Whitman.  Among  my  audience  was  Judge  Deady,  who 
afterwards  informed  me  that  all  that  I  said  about  Whitman  was  wrong. 
There  were  others  who  contradicted  the  Judge  and  maintained  that  I  was 
right.  I  now  see,  however,  that  the  Judge  was  right.  I  feel  personally 
grateful  to  you  for  the  light  you  have  throwm  upon  the  subject,  and  I  am 
very  glad  that  I  never  printed  anything  about  the  Whitman  business. 
That,  however,  I  should  not  have  been  likely  to  do  without  further  exami- 
nation of  sources.  You  have  done  your  work  so  thoroughly  that  it  will 
not  need  to  be  done  again. 


230  AMERICAN    HISTORICAL    ASSOCIATION. 

I  shall  be  very  glad  if  you  can  tell  me  when  we  may  hope  to  see  your 
essays  in  print. 

In  conclusion,  you  will  pardon  me  for  saying  that  I  think  the  force 
of  your  arguments  would  be  enhanced  if  your  style  of  expression  were 
now  and  then  a  little  less  vehement.  I  quite  sympathize  with  your  feel- 
ing toward  the  humbug  which  you  are  exposing,  but  it  seems  to  me 
that  there  is  great  value  in  a  quiet  form  of  statement,  even  approaching 
to  understatement,  for  it  gives  the  reader  a  chance  to  do  a  little  swearing 
at  the  enemy  on  his  own  account. 

In  May  last  Mr.  D.  H.  Montgomery  wrote  me  (after  read- 
ing the  same  manuscripts  as  Professor  Fiske):  "  I  am  now 
convinced  that  there  is  no  satisfactory  evidence  that  Whitman 
came  East  on  a  political  errand,  and  when  I  return  from  Eu- 
rope in  the  autumn  I  shall  revise  my  histories  accordingly;" 
and  November  13,  1900,  he  wrote  me:  "  You  will  be  pleased 
to  know  that  I  have  this  day  rewritten  the  Whitman  para- 
graphs in  my  Leading  Facts  of  American  History  and  made 
reference  in  a  note  to  your  valuable  (forthcoming)  book  on 
Fremont  and  Whitman;"  and  November  16  Mr.  H.  E.  Scud- 
der  (who  it  will  be  remembered  was  the  editor  of  Barrows's 
" Oregon")  wrote  me,  after  only  a  partial  examination  of  the 
criticism  I  had  sent  him,  as  follows:  "  Of  one  thing  I  am  cer- 
tainly convinced,  that  however  much  force  is  to  be  given  to 
Dr.  Whitman's  own  statement  of  the  value  he  rendered,  the 
incident  of  his  ride  had  no  such  importance  as  would  justify 
the  space  I  have  given  it;  nor  is  it  the  place  of  a  school  his- 
tory to  include  matters  which  are  in  dispute,  especially  in  such 
a  way  as  to  imply  that  there  is  no  dispute.  1  shall  therefore 
rewrite  the  passages  in  my  two  histories  which  bear  upon  the 
subject;"  and  on  November  29,  1900,  Professor  McMaster, 
who  had  had  the  same  manuscripts  as  Fiske  and  Montgomery, 
wrote  me  as  follows: 

I  must  apologize  very  sincerely  for  the  long  delay  in  returning  your 
manuscripts  and  for  the  failure  to  promptly  thank  you  for  permission  to 
examine  them.  Delay  wTas  caused  by  a  desire  to  read  every  word,  and 
with  this  end  in  view  they  were  held  till  the  summer  vacation,  when  they 
were  fully  and  carefully  read  and  reread.  You  have  undoubtedly  made 
out  your  case.  The  weight  of  evidence  seems  to  be  against  the  belief 
that  Whitman  rode  to  Washington  to  save  Oregon,  and  in  support  of  your 
statement  that  his  purpose  was  to  save  his  mission. 

The  care  with  which  you  have  searched  far  and  wide  for  evidence  is 
admirable,  and  the  quantity  you  have  gathered  is  surprising.  Thank  you 
very  much  for  the  use  of  the  manuscripts  and  please  pardon  my  shortcom- 
ings. 


MARCUS  WHITMAN.  231 

So  many  people  like  Barrows,  Nixon,  Craighead,  Rev.  M. 
Eells,  Rev.  Dr.  Thomas  Laurie,  Dr.  W.  A.  Mowry,  and  Rev. 
Dr.  Edwards  have  written  upon  this  subject  without  knowing 
anything  about  the  facts,  that  I  thought  one  man  ought  to 
have  the  patience  to  wait  till  he  had  thoroughly  mastered  it 
before  rushing  into  print  about  it,  but  I  am  now  ready  to  pub- 
lish the  "final  word"  on  the  subject. 

If  ever  the  shade  of  any  man  departed  to  the  land  of  spirits  // 
has  had  occasion  to  cry  out,  "  Save  my  reputation  from  my 
fool  friends,"  it  is  the  spirit  of  Marcus  Whitman.  But  for 
their  folly  in  trying  to  make  a  great  patriotic  hero  out  of  u 
commonplace  man  it  would  never  have  been  necessary,  as  it 
is  now  for  the  vindication  of  the  truth  of  history,  to  spread 
before  all  the  world  all  the  facts  about  the  relations  of  Dr. 
and  Mrs.  Whitman  and  their  associates,  especially  Spalding 
and  Gray,  the  continual  slanders,  and  backbiting,  and  fool- 
ish quarrels  about  things  of  no  real  consequence,  which  had 
disgraced  and  distracted  the  mission  from  its  very  start  and 
threatened  it  with  destruction  when  it  was  not  yet  three  years 
old.  It  is  without  exception  the  most  amazing  story  of  small  - 
souled  and  narrow-minded  folly  I  have  ever  read,  especially 
in  view  of  the  claims  made  for  Whitman  of  greatness  of 
mind  and  lofty  patriotism  and  intense  public  spirit.  It  was 
these  follies  and  not  patriotism  which  caused  Whitman's  ride. 

A  careful  examination  of  all  the  published  and  the  unpub- 
lished correspondence  of  Whitman  and  all  his  associates  in 
the  Oregon  Mission  prior  to  1843  (a  matter  of  about  2,000 
pages),  shows  that  neither  Whitman  nor  any  of  the  rest  of 
them  ever  wrote  in  it  all  so  much  as  one  sentence  expressing 
the  least  concern  about  or  care  for  the  political  destiny  of 
Oregon. 

After  Whitman  had  visited  the  States  and  found  the  whole 
country  aflame  on  the  Oregon  question  (though  not  from  any 
acts  of  his)  he  did  express  in  some  letters  some  interest  in 
the  matter,  but  not  before  that  time. 

December  7,  1857,  Rev.  E.  Walker,  who,  as  moderator  of 
the  meetings  of  the  mission  of  which  Rev.  C.  Eells  was  scribe, 
knew  as  much  of  the  origin  and  purpose  of  Whitman's  ride 
as  anyone,  wrote  of  Whitman  to  Rev.  S.  B.  Treat,  secretary 
of  the  American  board,  as  follows:  "His  melancholy  end 
seemed  such  as  to  bury  all  his  errors  and  mistakes  in  the 


232  AMERICAN    HISTORICAL    ASSOCIATION. 

grave  with  him. "  There  they  should  and  would  have  remained 
but  for  the  invention  of  the  saved  Oregon  fiction,  with  its  per- 
versions and  falsifications  of  all  the  real  and  intensely  interesting 
history  of  the  acquisition  of  the  old  Oregon  Territory,  being 
Oregon,  Washington,  Idaho,  and  about  28,000  square  miles  of 
Montana  and  about  13,000  square  miles  of  Wyoming,  or  nearly 
one-twelfth  of  our  national  domain  on  this  continent.  But  for 
this  falsification  of  the  history  of  the  acquisition  of  that  vast 
region  by  the  invention  and  dissemination  of  this  fiction  Marcus 
Whitman,  who  was  not  above  a  third  or  fourth  rate  man, 
would  long  since  have  lost  all  special  interest  for  me,  since 
the  true  story  of  his  life  shows  the  correctness  of  what  Hon. 
Jesse  Applegate  (one  of  the  real  leaders  of  the  1843  migration) 
wrote  me  of  him.  "  Whitman  acted  well  his  part,  but  it  was 
not  a  high  one.  *  *  *  He  was  not  one  to  lead  in  a  great 
enterprise.  *  *  *  He  lacked  the  qualities  needful  in  a 
leader  of  men." 

Since  writing  these  pages  I  have  learned  that  in  the  Sac- 
ramento Union  of  November  16,  1864,  over  the  signature  of 
"C."  (which  means  S.  A.  Clarke,  then  its  Oregon  correspond- 
ent) there  appeared  the  following  in  an  account  of  the  pro- 
ceedings on  occasion  of  the  presentation  of  the  tomahawk, 
with  which  it  was  alleged  Dr.  Whitman  was  killed,  to  the 
archives  of  Oregon. 

Hon.  (J.  H.  ?)  Moores,  the  speaker  of  the  Oregon  assembly, 
in  the  course  of  his  remarks  "Related  an  incident  of  our 
early  history  never  to  my  knowledge  before  given  to  the 
public,  and  that  was  heard  by  him  from  the  lips  of  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Spalding,  another  early  missionary  and  the  coadjutor  of 
Dr.  Whitman.  When  the  Ashburton  treaty  was  in  progress, 
news  came  to  the  little  settlement  in  Oregon  that  the  Govern- 
ment was  about  disposing  of  the  whole  Northwest  coast  to 
the  English,  and  it  made  a  deep  impression  on  the  mind  of 
Whitman,  whose  long  residence  had  produced  a  sincere 
attachment  for  the  land  of  his  adoption.  He  appreciated  its 
future  value  and  importance,  and  looked  upon  its  broad  rivers 
and  fertile  valleys  as  fields  for  the  development  of  population, 
wealth,  and  power.  Time  has  realized  the  conjecture,  which 
he  did  not  live  to  see;  but  he  was  restless,  under  the  impres- 
sion that  his  favorite  region  might  be  transferred  to  another 
power,  and,  midwinter  as  it  was,  he  undertook  the  dreary 


MARCUS  WHITMAN.  233 

and  then  dreaded  journey  across  the  plains  for  the  sole  pur- 
pose to  remonstrate  against  the  act.  Webster  was  Secretary 
of  State,  and  to  him  he  went  after  hastening-  to  Washington, 
and  asked  what  was  the  character  of  the  negotiations.  He 
was  told  that  the  preliminaries  of  the  treaty  were  about 
agreed  upon,  and  his  remonstrance  was  met  with  a  smile. 

["Why,  Doctor,  you  have  come  too  late;  we  have  about 
traded  oft'  the  Northwest  coast  for  a  codfishery." 

"  But,  sir,  you  do  not  know  what  you  are  doing;  you  do  not 
realize  that  that  territory  you  mention  with  a  smile,  almost 
a  sneer,  could  make  a  home  for  millions;  that  its  broad  navi- 
gable rivers  lead  to  an  ocean  whose  commerce  includes  the 
Indies  and  the  empires  of  the  Orient;  that  we  have  fine  har- 
bors and  broad  bays  to  invite  that  commerce  thither  and  offer 
an  anchorage  to  the  navies  of  the  world.  Then  there  are 
beautiful  and  fertile  valleys,  whose  harvests  will  yield  eventu- 
ally an  increase  to  the  nation's  wealth." 

"You  are  enthusiastic,  Doctor,"  answered  the  Secretary, 
with  an  easy  smile.  "  You  certainly  are  an  enthusiast.  The 
reports  that  come  to  us  from  Oregon  differ  materially  from 
yours.  The  central  portions  of  the  continent  are  a  barren 
wTaste,  and  the  waters  of  the  western  slope  course  through  a 
mountain  wilderness  or  else  a  desert  shore.  The  mountaineer 
can  hunt  and  trap  there.  The  tourist  may  sketch  its  snow- 
capped ridges,  and  describe  the  Indian  in  his  native  haunts. 
The  trapper  finds  a  home  there. " 

"Sir,  you  have  no  idea  of  the  land  you  sneer  at.  Oregon 
has  all  the  virtues  we  claim  for  it.  A  few  Americans  have 
gone  thither  to  develop  our  nation's  wealth.  We  are  far  off, 
but  our  hearts  are  with  the  nation  of  our  birth.  We  are 
pioneers,  and  can  it  be  possible  that  our  claims  will  be  ignored, 
that  our  country  can  consent  to  trade  off  her  territory  and 
our  allegiance  to  a  foreign  power?"] 

"Dr.  Whitman  did  not  rest  the  question  with  the  Secretary. 
He  visited  President  Tyler  himself,  and  left  no  stone  unturned 
until-  he  had  awakened  an  interest  in  his  cause  in  the  minds  of 
the  President  and  a  portion  of  his  Cabinet,  and  a  due  consid- 
eration of  the  matter  induced  the  final  preservation  of  the 
greater  portion  of  the  Northwest  Territory  as  a  portion  of  the 
national  domain." 


234  AMERICAN   HISTORICAL   ASSOCIATION. 

So  much  of  this  as  I  have  put  in  brackets  [  J,  beginning 
with  "  Why,  Doctor,  you  have  come  too  late,"  and  ending 
with  "and  our  allegiance  to  a  foreign  power,"  I  have  known 
since  1885  was  quoted  on  page  7  of  Rev.  M.  Eells'  pamphlet, 
"Marcus  Whitman,"  etc.,  Portland,  Oreg.,  1883,  prefaced  by 
the  statement  (by  Rev.  M.  Eells)  that  "They  are  taken  from 
the  Dansville  (N.  Y.)  Advertiser  of  May  4,  1865,  which  copied 
them  from  the  Sacramento  Daily  Bulletin." 

But  as  I  well  knew  there  was  never  any  such  paper  as  the 
Sacramento  Daily  Bulletin — which  fact  Rev.  M.  Eells  (who 
was  born  and  has  always  lived  in  the  old  Oregon  Territory) 
ought  also  to  have  known — I  supposed  this  to  be  merely 
another  of  the  numerous  fabrications  of  alleged  "authori- 
ties" which  have  been  produced  by  the  advocates  of  this 
myth,  and  so  did  not  try  to  trace  this  quotation  up  until  since 
finding  the  matter  in  the  Sacramento  Union,  when  the  editor 
of  the  Dansville  Advertiser,  in  reply  to  my  letter  of  inquiry, 
wrote  me  that  the  article  appeared  in  his  paper  on  May  4, 
1865,  and  that  it  was  copied  from  the  Sacramento  Union. 

Concerning  this  Sacramento  Union  article  it  is  to  be  noted: 

(1)  That  except  the  above-noted  incomplete  and  improperly 
credited  extract  in  the  Dansville  (N.  Y.)  Advertiser,  it  has 
never  been  quoted  by  the  advocates  of  the  ' '  Whitman  saved 
Oregon  "  tale  in  all  their  voluminous  writings,  which  is  why  it 
has  hitherto  escaped  my  notice. 

(2)  That  though  explicitly  declared  to  have  been  derived 
from  Rev.  H.  H.  Spalding,  it  is  not  signed  by  him,  and  so 
could  easily  have  been  disavowed  by  him  and  by  his  associ- 
ates, if  they  had  desired  to  do  so,  as  not  being  an  accurate 
report  of  what  he  had  said. 

(3)  That  in  the  same  sentence  in  which  it  is  asserted  that 
the  speaker  of  the  Oregon  assembly  heard  this  tale  from  Mr. 
Spalding  it  is  explicitly  declared  that  it  had  never  before  been 
made  public. 

(4)  That  it  gives  no  detailed  statement  that  may  be  com- 
pared with  contemporaneous  documents  as  to  (a)  the  real 
causes  of  Whitman's  ride;  (b)  the  date  when  he  started;  (c) 
the  route  he  took;  (d)  the  dates  when  he  was  at  any  places  on 
the  way,  or  when  he  reached  the  States,  or  when  he  was  at 
Washington;  (e)  his  connection  with  the  migration  of  1843. 


MAKCUS  WHITMAN.  235 

(5)  That  brief  and  vague  as  it  is,  it  contains  several  abso- 
lutely false  statements,  all  of  which,  except  the  one  marked 
(d)  below,  Spalding  expanded  and  published  a  year  later  in 
the  Pacific,  as  follows: 

(a)  That  the  sole  purpose  of  Whitman's  ride  was  to  protest 
to  the  National  Government  against  a  proposition  to  trade  off 
Oregon  in  the  Ashburton  treaty ;  (b)  that  the  only  cause  of  his 
going  was  a  report  that  Oregon  was  likely  to  be  traded  off  in 
that  treaty;  (c)  that  he  arrived  just  in  time,  to  prevent  the 
consummation  of  a  trade  of  Oregon  for  a  codfishery  on  the 
banks  of  Newfoundland;  (d)  that  (although  it  gives  no  dates 
for  his  departure  for  the  States  or  for  his  arrival  at  any  point 
on  his  journe}r)  it  says  that  "it  was  midwinter"  when  he 
undertook  the  journey,  whereas  it  was  early  in  the  autumn — 
October  3 — when  he  started. 

(6)  That  four  men,  namely,  Rev.  H.  H.  Spalding,  Rev.  C. 
Eells,  Rev.  E.  Walker,  and  W.  H.  Gray,  knew  of  their  own 
knowledge  exactly  what  caused  Whitman's  ride;  and  that  of 
these,  Rev.  E.  Walker,  though  living  in  Oregon  till  his  death, 
on  November  21,  1877,  never,  so  far  as  yet  appears,  wrote  so 
much  as  one  sentence  indorsing  any  form  of  the  saving  Ore- 
gon theory  of  that  ride,  and  that  whatever  Spalding  and  Gray 
talked  about  it,  neither  of  them  ever  ventured  to  write  or 
print  over  his  own  signature,  so  that  he  could  be  held  respons- 
ible for  it,  anything  which  claimed  that  Whitman's  ride  was 
for  any  other  than  missionary  business,  till  Spalding's  articles 
in  the  Pacific,  October  19  and  November  9,  1865,  which  arti- 
cles contain  such  shameless  slanders  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Com- 
pany and  the  Catholic  missionaries  in  Oregon,  and  such  a  great 
number  of  statements  that  (if  he  were  sane)  he  must  have 
known  to  be  totally  false,  that  one  is  shut  up  to  the  conclusion 
that  either  he  was,  as  1  am  charitable  enough  to  believe,  an 
irresponsible  person,  or  else  a  phenomenal  and  totally  con- 
scienceless prevaricator. 

(7)  That  Rev.  C.  Eells  never  in  any  of  his  many  unpublished 
letters  in  the  files  of  the  American  board,  or  in  anything  else 
which  has  appeared  in  print,  ever  assigned  anything  but  mis- 
sionary business  as  a  cause  for  Whitman's  ride,  or  claimed 
that  it  had  produced  any  political  effect,  till  his  letter  of  May 
28,  1866  (published  in  the  Missionary  Herald  in  December, 
1866),  and  that  as  late  as  April,  1865,  he  denied  to  Hon. 


^ 


23fi  AMERICAN   HISTORICAL   ASSOCIATION. 

Elwood  Evans,  the  historian  of  Oregon,  any  knowledge  of 
anything  but  missionary  business  as  impelling  Whitman  to 
make  that  ride. 

Whitman's  own  letters  of  justification  written  after  his 
return,  in  which  he  endeavored  to  defend  himself  from  the 
censure  of  the  secretary  of  the  American  board  for  his 
expensive  disobedience  to  the  order  of  the  board  of  February, 
1842,  and  in  which  he  not  only  claimed  all  to  which  he  was 
really  entitled,  but  a  vast  deal  more,  are  fully  discussed  in  my 
"  Fremont  and  Whitman  book,"  and  it  only  needs  now  to  be 
said  that  in  no  one  of  them  did  he  claim  to  have  interviewed  the 
President  or  the  Secretary  of  State,  or  to  have  influenced  in 
any  way  any  negotiations  about  Oregon,  or  to  have  held  any 
public  meetings  or  addressed  any  such  meetings  held  by 
others  and  designed  to  promote  migration  to  Oregon,  or  to 
have  printed  anything  in  newspapers  or  in  a  pamphlet  about 
Oregon,  or  that  his  ride  was  intended  for  any  such  purpose, 
but  only  that  the  two  great  objects  of  his  ride  were  to  save 
the  mission  from  the  destruction  which  he  himself  writes  in 
these  letters  must  have  overtaken  it  if  he  had  not  made  the 
ride,  and  to  lead  out  a  migration,  or,  to  use  his  precise  words, 
"It  was  to  open  a  practical  route  and  safe  passage  and  a 
favorable  report  from  immigrants." 

An '8-page  letter  of  Rev.  H.  H.  Spalding  to  the  secretary 
of  the  American  board,  dated  as  late  as  October,  1857  (from 
which  nothing  has  yet  been  printed),  though  it  has  much  to 
say  of  Dr.  Whitman  as  a  martyr  and  is  bitterly  denunciatory 
of  the  Catholics,  and  accuses  them  of  inciting  the  Whitman 
massacre  and  severely  arraigns  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  for  not 
recognizing  the  value  of  Whitman's  labors,  and  for  refusing 
to  "admit  a  line  of  this  testimony"  (i.  e.,  "testimony"  which 
Spalding  had  secured  of  persons  who  averred  that  the  "Cath- 
olics were  the  promoting  cause  of  that  bloody  tragedy  "  W.  I. 
M.),  "or  any  part  of  my  communications  in  your  publica- 
tions" does  not  in  all  its  eight  foolscap  pages — say  2,000  to 
2,500  words — even  intimate  that  Whitman  had  had  anything 
to  do  with  saving  Oregon,  or  was  entitled  to  any  credit  as  a 
patriot,  which  is  sufficient  proof  that  as  late  as  October,  1857, 
the  ' '  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  "  fiction  had  not  begun  to  take 
shape  even  in  Spalding's  disordered  mind. 


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